Performativity and convergence in comparative corporate governance

Abstract

We engage with the convergence/divergence debate in the comparative study of corporate governance by commending a nuanced formulation of the convergence thesis. Directing attention to the precarious constitution and adoption of knowledge claims about corporate status and architecture in the field of corporate governance we suggest that the study of comparative corporate governance might usefully incorporate consideration of claims about corporate governance as potentially performative statements that function to stabilize particular ideas of status and architecture of the modern corporation with substantive outcomes for political economy, thereby influencing the shape of the institutions comprising the field of corporate governance. We conclude that the predominantly epistemological preoccupations of participants in the convergence/divergence debate could be usefully refined and supplemented by giving closer attention, empirical as well as theoretical, to the relation between performativity, convergence/divergence, and political economy.