The Governance of Corporate Governance: the Discourse of Publicity in the Early Twentieth Century Mitchell Stein, Vaughan Radcliffe, and Crawford Spence Outline of Paper: Stein et al. offer a study of the regulatory attempts to exert control over large industrial corporations around the turn of the last century in the US. In a history of how accounting disclosure came to be a central focus of the policies of successive US federal regulatory bodies, Stein et al. examine how political programmes, based on the idea that publicity is an effective tool of control, failed to enact either effective control or legislation over large industrial corporations. Stein et al. suggest that these “programmes of reform” were successful only in leading to more reforms, also based on the same misguided principle. Stein et al. are challenging the notion that “society can progress…through improved or successive rounds of regulatory reform”. (p. 8). They do this through an analysis of the political programmes based on progressivism, activities of which underpinned the creation of the Industrial Commission, and successively the establishment of the Bureau of Corporations, and the Federal Trade Commission. The authors link the inception of these regulatory bodies to the emergence of accounting as a taken for granted tool of disclosure, a premise which persists to this day. The authors place their study in the corporate governance literature, as they explore the “governance of corporate governance”. In so doing, they criticize heavily the extant literature, which they see as taking an “ahistorical”, and alternatively “neo-classical” and “neo-liberal”, view of corporate governance issues. Their aim, conversely, is to view corporate governance as a “historical phenomenon”, embedded in a “larger, social, political, and economic context” (page 7). Their sociologically informed approach appreciates the “…broader issues of the exercise of corporate power within society” (page 6). Employing a Foucauldian approach in a governmentality perspective on analysis, Stein et al. liken the regulatory reforms aimed at controlling trusts to the “congenitally failing operation” identified by Rose and Miller (1992). Rather than constraining the growing corporate power, the regulatory reforms succeeded only in perpetuating further reforms, which were also based on the same premise of publicity. They identify these successive reforms as a precursor to the 1933 Securities Act, and its reliance on the notion of financial disclosure as a way of controlling behaviour. These reforms were underpinned by a progressive mentality. Stein et al. describe this mentality in terms of its anti-trust sentiment, and its support for government intervention into business affairs in order to ensure free competition. It is this progressive movement that forms the basis for emerging programmes of control over trusts, of which Stein et al. focus on the idea of publicity. The emergence of publicity as a means for controlling trusts rested upon the notion that subjecting business to scrutiny would thus identify “bad” trusts as opposed to “good” trusts. Through the study of the historical processes of regulatory reform enacted through government bodies, Stein et al problematize the use of disclosure in the control of corporations. This problematization is pertinent, as the belief that regulatory action aimed at effective disclosure remains a foregone conclusion to present day legislators. Critique In advancing the governmentality approach to the study of accounting regulation, Stein et al. offer both a valuable empirical site of analysis and a potentially informative theoretical approach to the history of accounting as a tool for control. By demonstrating the relationship between programmatic attempts and legislative action, the authors illustrate the interdependence of political initiative, tools of enactment, and context. The authors also raise important questions about the value of attempts at regulatory reform, and the main premises upon which reform was based, from a very early beginning. These questions remain relevant to the present day. To add to the insight they provide, Stein et al. could develop some areas of the paper further. Their theoretical development would be enhanced by demonstrating how a governmentality approach is both employed and extended beyond the standard approach, and through specifying the meanings of certain key components. The application of their theoretical base to their empirical analysis would be augmented by following through with the “web of expertise” identified early in the paper to further explore the discourses amongst the relevant actors. Writing their version of events to acknowledge and reveal the road not taken, through an analysis of the other solutions put forward by the relevant “experts” to solve the trust problem, would enrich their writing of history. By thus offering a fuller history and deeper analysis of the discourses, they could show how the path to publicity, and its perpetuation, is fractured and non-linear. Expanding, defining, and advancing their governmentality approach To demonstrate that a governmentality approach is insightful here, an exposition of some elements of this approach would be useful. To show how the programmes failed, perhaps it would be useful to expand upon how they could have worked. For instance, how publicity would control the trusts. Merino and Neimark (1982) suggest that publicity of successful companies was intended to reveal the profit potential of certain industries, thus attracting other corporate entrants to those markets, and increasing competition. In addition to offering more in terms of how publicity was supposed to show the “good” trusts from the “bad” trusts, also beneficial would be a discussion of the efficacy of publicity itself at the outset. Is publicity a tool that is doomed to fail in its own impossibility, as Roberts (2009) suggests of a similar concept, that of transparency? Stein et al. could further illustrate how the programme was supposed to work, clarifying how their theoretical base is relevant in an analysis of how it failed. Expanding upon key terms, clarifying their meaning and demonstrating how they are using and advancing them, would serve to demonstrate the extent of the social apparatus under analysis, would add to the reader’s understanding of the paper’s theoretical contribution, and would supplement the researchers’ empirical analysis. This would both demonstrate the usefulness of a governmentality approach to their empirical site, and extend their application of Rose and Miller’s (1992) exposition of governmentality. Two of the main aspects of governmentality that Stein et al. are concerned with are programmes and technologies. Stein et al. could provide more specificity in their use of these terms, and how they are key components that either fit into or constitute the social apparatus, or dispositif (Deleuze, 1991). In explaining what they mean by a programme, and by programmatic, Stein et al. offer an illustration of progressivism as the programme underpinning regulatory reform. While noting that there was some diversity within this movement, Stein et al. describe progressivism in terms of those elements that suggest a cohesive, unequivocal movement. According to Miller and O’Leary (1989:253) however: “Progressivism entailed no single political program” (they cite Karl (1983), pp. 16- 20 and Waldo (1948), pp. 16-17). Further, relying on the judgment of Hofstadter (1955, pp. 216-217) Miller and O’Leary (1989: 253) note that, at its most cohesive, progressivism represented a "complaint of the unorganized against the consequences of organization." Describing how they are using or extending the term programme, before applying it to progressivism, and by illustrating differences within and the boundaries of the progressive movement, Stein et al. would reinforce the foundation of their analysis for publicity as part of such a programme. Another term used often by Stein et al., which would benefit from enhanced specificity, is technology. More clearly defining technology, in terms of its relation to the programme, its fit within the larger apparatus, and in relation to publicity, would answer some questions for the reader: What does technology include and exclude? In what way is accounting a technology? Is accounting a part of the larger technology of publicity, and if so, what are the other elements that make up the greater social apparatus? Web of expertise: As Miller and Rose suggest: “…the notion of government draws attention to the diversity of forces and groups that have, in heterogeneous ways, sought to regulate the lives of individuals and the conditions within particular national territories in pursuit of various goals.” (Miller and Rose, 1990:3). For Stein et al., in employing a governmentality approach to their study, attention to the actors implicated in both advancing and opposing publicity would offer a more complete story of how discursive action resulted in the emergence of publicity, and how accounting became central to its enactment and durability. To do this, more attention might be given to the numerous actors and the myriad forces that had an effect on US national policy at the turn of the century. Early in the paper, Stein et al. state the importance of a “growing web of expertise” (p. 3), but by not developing this further in their analysis, these experts are lost along the way. While some proponents of publicity are picked up later on, the voice of opposition, both within the publicity camp and in opposition to it, is not heard. Using Foucault’s notion of the specific intellectual (Foucault, 1980: 132) to develop the idea of “experts” and “expertise” would provide a basis for the analysis of the discourses produced by the relevant actors who represent the various diverse interests both in support for, and in opposition to, publicity. The Road Not Taken Deleuze (1991) reminds us that the development of the apparatus is non-linear. It suffers breaks and retractions, discontinuity and obstruction. If Stein et al. identify the experts, as noted above, and analyze their discourses, much may also be learned about the road that was not taken on the path to publicity. What are some of the other ways in which attempts were made to control or regulate trusts? There must have been opponents. As Stein et al. suggest, publicity was only one of many approaches to the trust problem: “Amongst the various remedies discussed as a means to control trusts post-Sherman, publicity was among the most often mentioned…”(page 17). Moreover, there must have been disagreement amongst the supporters of publicity. Was accounting, in the early form that it took, the only form of publicity that was put forward? The paper’s description of the statistical analysis employed by the Industrial Commission suggests that it was as likely to yield the desired programmatic results, as it provided another tool for making the trusts “known” and thus governable (page 23). Following the opposition to publicity may say much about how publicity ultimately prevailed. Of course, in writing about events over one hundred years hence, assumptions must be made and certain elements must be left out. In writing their history, the authors would have given privilege to certain actors, texts, and events over others. More could be said, however, about the assumptions that the authors made in writing their history of publicity. Conclusion To further demonstrate the value of their theoretical approach, Stein et al. would benefit from specifying the main components of governmentality that they use: programmes and technologies. Showing how they are using these concepts to extend the governmentality literature and examine their empirical setting will clarify how a political movement is enacted in a greater social apparatus through various tools of government. Central to this is an identification of the specific intellectuals that act as experts who give voice to competing interests while constituting this social apparatus. Following the discourses of these experts through the various breaks and obstructions that led to the eventual prominence of publicity would show that, while things could have been different, certain ideas will prevail in spite of their ineffectiveness. Stein et al. present a useful history of the now commonplace notion that disclosure, especially in accounting terms, is an effective tool for corporate governance. Their study is a useful contribution to the corporate governance literature, which seems particularly culpable in perpetuating this notion. Their analysis of the political programme that led to the prominence of publicity as a way to control corporate power, and accounting as a way to effect publicity, serves to highlight that disclosure was not always as taken for granted as it is now, in either the regulatory mentality, or the academic literature. References Deleuze, G. (1991). What is a Dispositif? In T. J. Armstrong (Ed.), Michel Foucault philosopher: Essays translated from the French and German. New York: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1980). In Gordon C. (Ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972 - 1977. New York: Harvester Press. Foucault, M. (2003). In Rabinow P., Rose N. S. 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