Power and Authority in Corporate Governance

The historical development of peoples' thinking on property is used to explore the nature and dynamics of governance in the private corporation. It is argued that there has been a shift to a higher level of abstract thinking on the rights of property ownership in keeping with the new age of politicism, which helps, in turn, to identify the new emerging responsibilities of executive management. This leads to an analysis of the shifting distribution of corporate political power between executive management and corporate boards. The treatment of the “corporation as a person” has to evolve into thinking about large corporations as well-governed societies akin to nation states.