ABSTRACT
In this chapter we consider our findings from Parts I and II on the causes of systemic corporate governance change generally, how globalization causes change, the dynamics of change that led to the UK and US emerging as unique outsider systems and whether the changes we identified in Germany’s corporate governance system, resulting from economic globalization, have caused or are likely to cause it to transform/converge to an outsider corporate governance system. To do this we begin by recapping on our conclusions from each chapter and then in the following sections drawing out some remaining issues. In Part 1: Theorizing Corporate Governance Change, we began in the first chapter by setting out the contested theoretical context in which convergence scholarship has occurred. As Anglo/Saxon capitalism has come to dominate global capital markets, so too the domestic Anglo/Saxon conception of accountability whereby divergence from outsider shareholder oriented norms is viewed negatively, has been elevated to the global arena. This has led to claims that insider systems such as Germany are inferior and will converge or be transformed into outsider systems. An understanding of the roots of this corporate theory contest and the ascendance of shareholder oriented theories is important because theory and corporate governance transformation are strongly linked in the UK and US experience. Additionally the shareholder supremacy scholarship has been influential in framing the rules upon which the process of globalizing capital markets has been based. As a result shareholder bias within the convergence scholarship needs, in our view, to be filtered for when considering change and transformation in corporate governance systems.
