ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the evolution of internal management work within large corporations from the end of the nineteenth century to the late 1960s. It argues that internal financialization is the prior condition for external financialization, as expressed notably in the shareholder value that is the focus of most theoretical and empirical analyses of financialization of corporate governance. Starting from the twofold nature of management work, our analysis examines how top managers of large corporations have become progressively disassociated from the production process. Through an exploration of the history of business accounting, we show how the evolution of management work has progressively financialized the functions of top managers. One of our main conclusions is that the alliance between shareholders and top managers around the nature and purpose of the firm is the result of an endogenous process. Therefore, the origin of shareholder-value-based corporate governance not only has to be situated before the rise of institutional investors and financial liberalization in the 1970s, but must also be seen as an internal process setting the conditions for the emergence of this management model.

摘要

本文分析了从 19 世纪末到 1960 年代后期大公司内部管理工作的演变。它认为，内部金融化是外部金融化的先决条件，尤其体现在股东价值上，这是大多数公司治理金融化理论和实证分析的焦点。从管理工作的双重性质出发，我们的分析考察了大公司的高层管理人员是如何逐渐与生产过程脱节的。通过对商业会计历史的探索，我们展示了管理工作的演变如何逐步将高级管理人员的职能财务化。我们的主要结论之一是，股东和高管之间围绕公司性质和目的的联盟是内生过程的结果。因此，以股东价值为基础的公司治理的起源，不仅要定位于1970年代机构投资者和金融自由化兴起之前，而且要被看作是为这种管理模式的出现设置条件的内部过程。 .