Governance can be viewed as the management of the organisation, distinguished from the general need to organise and support company activity by the strategic nature of the concept of governing or controlling at the highest level.
A dictionary definition confirms the root of the Governance to be the Latin word “Gubernare”, meaning “to steer”. This suggests that governance is about commanding the direction of the vessel as it ploughs the seas of trade. This direction will be provided by the board of directors and so governance relates to the actions of directors and the decisions that they reach.
It is also true that governance is perceived as the actions of government in determining how others operate in society. In this sense governance relates to regulation of the nature of external control over corporate activity.The development of the joint stock corporation as a syllabus reference is a device used to promote two concepts, firstly that society’s relationship with the corporation has developed over long periods of time and secondly that this development is truly an evolution that highlights the growing nature of power that corporations wield.
In 2003, Burnett and Games in their text “Who really runs the world?” suggest a tipping point in history during that year that prompted them to commit the moment to the written word. They suggest that, during that year, when the top 100 economic powers of the world are identified, for the first time in history the percentage relating to corporations, rather than governments, had passed into the majority of 51%.
