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Who Should Control the Corporation?
Mintzberg, Henry
27/1 (Fall 1984): 90-115

This article debates over the control of the organization, the major debate revolving around the private sector, who should control the corporation. The answers that are eventually accepted will determine what kind of society people should live in. To date, the debate has been left largely to political scientists and economists. They are the ones who have addressed the issue in its broadest context, while management theorists have tended to cluster around the social responsibility position. One should be concerned not only about political control and economic performance but also about what is feasible in an organizational context and what can be achieved by a system of management. By focusing on this perspective, the author believes this article is able to bring new insight into a long standing and important debate that has grown stale and stagnant. As implied earlier, the various positions of who should control the corporation, and how, can be laid out along a political spectrum, from nationalization at one end to the restoration of shareholder power at the other. From the managerial perspective, however, those two extremes are not so far apart. Both call for direct control of the corporation's managers by specific outsiders, in one case the government to ensure the pursuit of social goals, in the other case the shareholders to ensure the pursuit of economic ones. It is the moderate positions, notably, trusting the corporation to the social responsibility of its managers, that are farthest from the extremes. Hence, one can fold the spectrum around so that it takes the shape of a horseshoe.

California Management Review

Article Information

California Management Review

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