Sustainable Governance: A Sine Qua Non of the Age of Sustainability

Abstract

Corporate governance has experienced numerous changes in chime with the exigencies of the time during which it has been introduced or the context in which it has been practiced. Its gestation can be divided into three stages of development namely the traditional governance, the current transitional governance, and the upcoming sustainable governance. Traditional governance refers to the period hitherto the industrial revolution when corporations have not yet been formed, in today’s sense, but the governance structures were already in place in the existing entities at the time. Transitional governance refers to a period between the industrial revolution and the information age when corporations started to rise as a new economic entity. Reviewing the dominant corporate governance models are integral to understanding the transitional era. At the end of the transitional governance era, a transmogrification in corporate governance is underway to prepare itself for the coming age of sustainability. Sustainable governance integrates the principles of systems thinking and appreciates the complexity of decision-making environment, contrary to its former iterations that welcomed oversimplification of interactive messes (systems of problems). The objective of this chapter is to review corporate governance developmental transition toward sustainable governance and its role in the age of sustainability.

Citation

Rahdari, A. (2017), "Sustainable Governance: A Sine Qua Non of the Age of Sustainability", Modern Organisational Governance (Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Vol. 12), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 67-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2043-052320170000012004