Corporations in Evolving Diversity: Cognition, Governance and Institutions

Translated from English by Yu. Kapturovsky; scientific editor of the translation T. Drobyshevskaya. – M.: Gaidar Institute Press, 2015. – 368 p.

ISBN 978-5-93255-426-5

In recent decades, the firm has come to be considered an organization managed in the interests of shareholders, where management acts as an agent of shareholders, and employees serve as simple instruments for maximizing the value of shares. This book revises this point of view. It views corporations as associative cognitive systems in which “cognitive actions” are distributed between managers and employees, and shareholders provide “cognitive tools” and monitor their use in the systems. Aoki analyzes the various relationships that are possible between shareholders, managers, and employees from the perspective of this approach, and identifies several different models of organizational architecture and associative governance structures.