Associative Corporate Governance

This thesis argues for a radical change in the way multinational corporations prepare their decisions, both on a strategic level and on a day-to-day operational level. It proposes and details a new perspective of corporate governance based on the principles of associative democracy as a precondition for a truly sustainable company policy. The author has chosen the steel industry as the breeding ground for this new perspective. As a former managing director of one of the Business Units of the Hoogovens/Corus group, he has 36 years of experience in the steel industry. He uses this expertise to shape the new concept of corporate governance under the specific conditions of this industry. The combination of his initial technical background (MSc from the Technological University Delft) and a recent philosophical orientation (MA degree in Philosophy from the University of Amsterdam) results in his approach as an “engineer-philosopher”. That means a philosophical stand translated into practical solutions. By looking at corporations from this point of view, he creates new insights and ideas, following Isaiah Berlin’s statement that the task of philosophy is ‘to subvert, break through, destroy, deliberate, let air in from outside’.