حاکمیت شرکتی و نخبگان Corporate governance and elites

1. Introduction In the last two decades, the institutional theory has contributed to a richer understanding of the behaviour and reactions of stakeholders to issues of corporate governance (Aguilera & Jackson, 2003; Judge, Douglas, & Kutan, 2008). It has stimulated research towards understanding the macro and micro institutional influences on corporate governance in varieties of capitalism (Adegbite & Nakajima, 2011; Filatotchev, Jackson, & Nakajima, 2013; Lien & Li, 2013). However, given the promising prospects of the institutionalism-based corporate governance discourse, its usefulness in explaining corporate governance, especially in weak institutional contexts, has suffered from an important limitation. This relates to the role of elites (see Domhoff, 1990; Vergara, 2013) in shaping corporate governance through their influences on institutional (e.g. regulatory) mechanisms. ‘Elite’ was used in the 17th century to describe items of particular excellence, but the usage has been extended to refer to superior social groups (Bottomore, 2006). Elites represent a small group of influential people that control a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege or power in society (Mills, 2000). Elites, in each sphere of activity, have succeeded or arrived at a higher echelon in the hierarchy (Aron, 1999). They include business (corporate) elites (Sikka, 2017), community elites, religious elites (Barro & McCleary, 2003), political elites (Aplin & Hegarty, 1980; Hadani, 2012) and professional elites (Aron, 1999). Essentially, elites have no restriction regarding their locale. They dictate the governance process in institutional settings, be it religious, military, academic, professions, community, or industry (Rizvi, 2015). In doing this, they use power and domination to influence the governance networks that promote institutional and organisational goals (Maclean, Harvey, & Chia, 2010).