A sustainable future for corporate governance theory and practice

Abstract

With this paper we show how the natural “science of control and communications in the animal and the machine” identified by Wiener in 1948 can be applied to social organizations to establish a science of governance. Evidence is provided that current practices are not consistent with the laws of nature or the practices of living things that must become self-regulating and self-governing to exist in dynamic unknowable complex environments. Case studies of stakeholder mutual firms with hundreds of boards show how an ecological form of polycentric decision-making provides: (a) division of powers; (b) checks and balances; (c) distributed intelligence to reduce information overload, and (d) decomposition of decision-making labour to introduce tensions of challenge; (e) a requisite variety of cross checking communication and control channels from stakeholder engagement to improve their integrity; (f) integration of management and governance to further selfregulation and self-governance with: (g) operating advantages such as resiliency, sustainability and wellbeing for firm, its stakeholders and society. The case studies illustrate how ecological governance could reduce the size, scope, cost and intrusiveness of government and their regulators while improving economic efficiency and enriching democracy with widespread citizen stakeholder engagement.