Corporate governance, executive pay, and the ethical and institutional abandonment of the working class

This chapter considers the impact of corporate governance on compounding inequality in the economy and society. There is growing evidence of the return of extreme inequality in the distribution of wealth both within countries and between countries. As the financialisation of these economies has continued, it is those who already have considerable accumulations of wealth who seem to benefit most, and this acute increase in inequality is particularly evident in the United States. One dynamic for the rapid and widespread intensification of inequality is the transformation of corporate governance in the later decades of the twentieth century from a technocratic managerialism that regarded the objectives of the corporation to deliver value to all stakeholders, enhancing the prosperity of the economy and society in the process, to a much narrower and doctrinaire sense of shareholder primacy in which maximising shareholder value became the sole objective of the corporation. In examining this process, the main focus is on the rapid inflation in executive pay.