Interesting post from Brian Cheffins on the rise of corporate governance:
The term “corporate governance”, while now ubiquitous, was largely unknown in the U.S. until the 1970s and the rest of world until the 1990s. There has been little research done on why corporate governance rose to prominence when it did. Conceivably the lack of analysis could be because nothing more was going on than the adoption of a handy catch phrase encompassing already familiar topics and themes. In fact, the new terminology was accompanied by a reconfiguration of governance arrangements in U.S. public companies. These important changes coincided with and were related to the demise of a “managerial capitalism” era that reached its apex in the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960s. In my paper “Corporate Governance Since the Managerial Capitalism Era”, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2618480 and forthcoming in the Business History Review, I consider how and why corporate governance moved to the forefront in the manner it did as well as identify the implications for executives, directors and shareholders of public companies.
Go read the whole thing.
