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The Transnationalization of Economies, States, and Civil Societies pp 61–82Cite as

From Employee Governance to Corporate Governance: Transnational Forces and the Polish Corporate Governance Debates Since the 1980s

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This chapter discusses the corporate governance debate in postsocialist Poland in the light of processes of transnationalization. With the collapse of state socialism at the end of the 1980s, the countries in Central Europe faced a wide variety of ‘transition models’ from which they could choose. As Marangos (2004) points out, the former state socialist countries were to choose from a broad array of economic arrangements ranging from the introduction of a neoliberal market economy to a pluralistic socialist model, to mention but two totally different systems. This chapter aims to broaden our insights of why countries choose their distinct path. More concretely, it focuses on corporate governance debates, that is policy discussions on the distribution of ownership and control. Such debates have been of vital importance in the context of Central Europe, where the collapse of state socialism and its replacement with a decentralized market economy fundamentally altered the role of the firm within the economy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

     The only alteration from the original quote is based on the reference Bayart to colonial past Africa, which I have replaced by the word ‘transnational’.

  2. 2.

     Please note that the notion of external ownership still allows for substantial variation in actual ownership structures, ranging from highly dispersed ownership to large block holders (see for instance Andreff 2007). The main element of outside ownership rests on the separation between ownership on the one hand and management and employees on the other.

  3. 3.

     With regard to the first group, Marc Weinstein (2000) mentions the names of Lewandowski, Szomburg, Bielecki and Merkel. With regard to the second group we can think of people such as Balcerowicz (see also Balcerowicz 1995).

  4. 4.

     Interview with Balcerowicz, retrieved from Commanding Heights. The battle for the World economy. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitextlo/int_leszekbalcerowicz.html (20-1-2003).

  5. 5.

     The historic overview of AmCham Poland’s activities can be found under http://www.amcham.pl/index.php?mod=page&page=1_history&PHPSESSID=b7ba6d3edba877e5e308114254d232f1.

  6. 6.

     The acquis refers to the EU regulation that needed to be implemented prior to EU membership.

  7. 7.

     For an overview of Polish corporate governance scandals, see Dzierżanowski and Tamowicz 2003, Kobrak and Obloj 2002 and Tamowicz 2006.

  8. 8.

     See Best Practices in Public Companies in 2002, retrieved from http://www.ecgi.org/codes/documents/practices_2002.pdf, 24 April 2008.

  9. 9.

     Whereas the term ‘shareholder’ is mentioned 26 times.

  10. 10.

     Interviews with Raimondo Eggink, former Chief Executive Officer, ABN AMRO Asset Management Poland, June 2006 Warsaw, and with Mike Lubrano, International Finance Corporation, July 2007.

  11. 11.

     Interview with Tomasz Prusek, correspondent on corporate governance for the Gazeta Wyborcza, June 2006.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Henk Overbeek, Andreas Nölke, László Bruszt and Jasper de Raadt for their extremely insightful feedback and useful suggestions on earlier versions of this study. Research support by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) is gratefully acknowledged. The usual caveats apply.

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  1. Vrije University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Arjan Vliegenthart

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Correspondence to Arjan Vliegenthart .

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  1. Dept. Political & Social Sciences, European University Institute, Via dei Roccettini 9, San Domenico di Fiesole, 50016, Italy

    Laszlo Bruszt

  2. Dept. Political Science, University of Twente, Enschede, 7500 AE, Netherlands

    Ronald Holzhacker

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Vliegenthart, A. (2009). From Employee Governance to Corporate Governance: Transnational Forces and the Polish Corporate Governance Debates Since the 1980s. In: Bruszt, L., Holzhacker, R. (eds) The Transnationalization of Economies, States, and Civil Societies. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-89339-6_3

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