ABSTRACT
The recent crisis in financial markets has triggered questions about the actual and perceived role of shareholders. In public debate, they have been criticized for a one-sided financial, overly risky and short-term orientation. In this context, Eumedion, an interest group representing institutional investors in the Netherlands and Europe in particular, has initiated an independent qualitative survey. 1 It asked for an exploration of the roles defined in the law and relevant Dutch corporate governance codes for the management and supervisory boards of listed companies and shareholders on the one hand, and the perceived roles of these participants on the other. From April to October 2009 we organized in-depth interviews and round-table discussions with representatives of management boards (current and former CEOs), supervisory boards, the Dutch central bank, regulatory authorities of Dutch financial markets, private and institutional investors, and experts or scholars on corporate governance, company law and investment and asset management. The survey and the report (Kemna and Van de Loo 2009) are the result of an interdisciplinary approach exploring aspects of the experience, perception and behaviour of the various participants in their respective roles in the context of the Dutch financial system. As such, it is the fruit of an interdisciplinary approach combining insights, perspectives and frameworks from the domains of corporate governance, financial markets and asset management with those from leadership, group and systems psychodynamics (Gould et al. 2001). In this chapter we will focus on changes in the perceptions, experiences and behaviours of key players in their roles as member of the managing board, supervisory director or investor, as the case may be. We will explore how these key players experience and understand their own as well as the corresponding roles of other key players. Organizational role analysis (Borwick 2006) has been a leading framework in the conduction and analysis of the interviews. Organizational role analysis differentiates between the defined role (the formal definition and characteristics of the role), the described role (the actual experience and behaviour of the person in the role) and the systemic role (how the role fits the system and makes the system work). Individual experiences and behaviours of individuals in their roles typically reflect significant characteristics of the system or organization. After the presentation of the various roles and their interrelatedness, we will frame the systems complexity in terms of multiparty and interorganizational collaboration (Prins 2006, 2010; Neumann 2010). The enormous complexity of the financial system makes it also increasingly volatile and unpredictable. The risks seem insufficiently contained, as the recent series of financial crises reveal. A serious question is how to address these risks related to the primary task in a constructive way instead of avoiding them by unconscious collective defensive routines (Miller 1993; Hirschhorn 1999). We will conclude this chapter with a few recommendations about how even a small and relatively simple set of behavioural steps might improve the relationships among this triangle of institutional investors, members of the management board and supervisory directors.
