The Corporate Governance Machine

The conventional view of corporate governance is that it is a neutral set of processes and practices that govern how a company is managed. We demonstrate that this view is profoundly mistaken: For public companies in the United States, corporate governance has become a “system” composed of an array of institutional players, with a powerful shareholderist orientation. Our original account of this “corporate governance machine” generates insights about the past, present, and future of corporate governance. As for the past, we show how the concept of corporate governance developed alongside the shareholder primacy movement. This relationship is reflected in the common refrain of “good governance” that pervades contemporary discourse and the maturation of corporate governance as an industry oriented toward serving shareholders and their interests. As for the present, our analysis explains why the corporate social responsibility movement transformed into shareholder value–oriented environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards, stakeholder capitalism became relegated to a new separate form of entity known as the benefit corporation, and public company boards of directors became homogenized across industries. As for the future, our analysis suggests that absent a major paradigm shift that would force multiple institutional gatekeepers to switch their orientation, advocacy pushing corporations to consider the interests of employees, communities, and the environment will likely fail unless such effort is framed as advancing shareholder interests.