Corporate Governance between Disciplinary and Cognitive Approaches: What Synthesis of Thinking?

This article provides an overview of corporate governance. Starting from the origins of the concept of corporate governance to the birth of the managerial firm, it brings together the various theoretical contributions of researchers across a wide range of theories. The aim of this article is to present a summary of theories on corporate governance in order to give an overview of the discourse of the various thinkers and to provide a global idea of the state of research in this field. This synthetic and comprehensive overview makes it possible to grasp the shortcomings of each theory and paves the way for further research into corporate governance. In particular, the article develops agency theory, transaction cost theory, property rights theory, stakeholder theory, external resource dependency theory, stewardship theory, managerial hegemony theory and upper echelon theory, each of which falls within a disciplinary or cognitive view of the firm. In this vein, the article demonstrates that an integrated approach to corporate governance, which takes into account the behaviour of all the company’s stakeholders, makes it possible to establish a participative dynamic in the interests of all.