Corporate Governance: The OECD principles, the scope for a "model of the successful company", and a new challenge for the company law agenda and the broader regulatory agenda

Abstract

The OECD Principles of Corporate Governance, and the Methodology for assessing their implementation, seem to support those academic contributions which overcome the classic distinction between the shareholders primacy and the stakeholders' models of companies; they also appear to require a re-conceptualisation of the interests involved and not simply a model of company, but a model of the successful company. This paper proposes such a model, and asserts its validity from a property rights perspective and from a human rights perspective. It subsequently argues that shaping of a corporate governance framework based on this model would raise a key challenge for company law legislators and for the broader regulatory agenda, and that satisfactory responses to this challenge - for which some first hypothesis are proposed - would be fully compatible with the increasingly global corporate social responsibility concern, while opening new themes for academic research and for decision-makers choices.