The future of corporate governance in knowledge-dispersed companies.

Abstract

Corporate governance focuses its attention on the structure of the firm and the allocation of decision rights between owners and managers basically, plus other stakeholders. The field has developed extensively during the last decades inspiring reforms and practices as well as learning from them. Most of the analysis though takes into consideration the XXth Century firm, rightfully so since CG is a very practical field in the overlapping map of law, economics and finance. The firm has probably been one of the most successful institutional innovations of the last centuries. Five hundred years ago only a few of them existed, today they are pervasive. Nevertheless, we cannot expect the firm to be the same a hundred years from now as it is today. And if companies are going to be different, how will their corporate governance be affected? The present article does not expect to give an answer to such question. It only attempts to provoke debate and speculation about a possible evolution of the firm based on one single aspect of change: the increased use of dispersed knowledge. After suggesting some development and analyzing present innovations in that direction, we will open up to consideration how those potential changes may affect corporate governance. Of course, there are no specific conclusions, just a call to open our minds to future possible scenarios.