ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the term corporate governance as a set of rules, reports, processes, and corporate systems that define the distribution of rights and responsibilities within the company, describes the role of shareholders in a modern company, the functions which they fulfil, along with the key challenges, including shaping behaviours in the process of value creation in an enterprise. Dominant areas of shareholders’ impact on value creation in the IT companies were identified. The impact of the managerial role performed by the shareholder on the effectiveness of value creation was proposed. The authors reviewed the literature within the scope of entrepreneur theory, models of company orientation, including shareholders’ significance, the shareholder in the concept of corporate governance, and characteristics of shareholders in terms of a catalogue of managerial traits and roles. The significance of managerial maturity of shareholders was characterised, along with their personal brand, in the context of building a company’s capacity to create its own value.
