Enough chit‐chat, strike! Deliberation and agonism in corporate governance

Abstract

This paper contributes to the ongoing critique of a body of literature that could be called 'deliberative corporate governance'. This literature argues that corporations should adopt deliberative forms of governance that include their various stakeholders, instead of a top-down managerial hierarchy. Governance is here understood as the making and enforcing of rules concerning the ends pursued by corporations (or any other organisation; Scherer et al., 2006, p. 506; Scherer & Palazzo, 2011, p. 900). 'Stakeholders' is a term that has been criticised for being vague (Orts & Strudler, 2009). It is tentatively defined as all the economic agents that constitute the contractual members of a corporation and those who are affected by it (who have a 'stake' in it -the management, the employees, the owners, the customers), although its meaning will be extended and discussed below. This change in how corporations operate is to be justified based on an extension of the scope of corporate social responsibility (hereafter, CSR), hence the broad argument this literature relies on shall be labelled 'deliberative corporate social responsibility' (DCSR).