Fraser and the Politics of Corporate Governance
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00124 |
| Date | 01 June 1999 |
| Published date | 01 June 1999 |
| Author | Sally Wheeler |
Fraser and the Politics of Corporate Governance
SALLY WHEELER*
The issue of corporate governance from executives’ pay to the role of share-
holders at company meetings has become one with which there is more popu-
lar engagement than at any time this century. It may well be that much of
this interest has been stimulated by the philosophies of stakeholding and
partnership that have been widely touted as an answer to the social and
economic problems created by the policies of individualism and market
dominance of the New Right. However, it is also the case that there has
been little real political commitment to partnership and stakeholding in the
area of corporate governance. Corporate governance is treated as an aspect
of micro-economic policy that concerns only those involved in the manager-
shareholder matrix. It is not considered as a ‘big issue’ alongside the commit-
ment to rebuilding society and community. The Labour administration has
made it clear that competitiveness is the overriding goal for its policy
vis-à-
vis business. Its message on corporate pay is one of asking those concerned
to show restraint1and its promises of the stakeholder economy2have been
subsumed within an agenda of balancing the ‘interests of business with those
of shareholders, creditors and others’ alongside ‘the creation, growth
and competitiveness of British companies’ as the recent (March 1998)
Department of Trade and Industry paper, ‘Modern Company Law for a
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
* Law Department, Leeds University, Leeds LS2 9JT, England
1See the comments of Stephen Byers (now Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, then
Chief Secretary to the Treasury) on 11 August 1988 in response to Utility Week (31 July
1988) which revealed that boardroom pay had risen by 15 per cent in total, and by 18 per
cent in the utility sector.
2Corporations were to be considered ‘a community of partnership in which each employee
has a stake and where a company’s responsibilities are more clearly delineated’ (speech by
Tony Blair in Singapore, 8 January 1996). Further acclamation of what was promised by
this was provided by Will Hutton in the Guardian, 9 January 1996; the stakeholder economy
was to be ‘a different political economy of capitalism with profound implications for
economic, social and political organisation.’ While the rhetorical flourish of stakeholding
has dropped from recent policy statements in favour of third-way thinking, the message on
the future of the corporate sector still focuses on responsibility inculcated through social
rather than regulatory pressure; see T. Blair, The Third Way (1998).
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