Converging Divergence in Corporate Governance in Singapore

Abstract

Whether intensifying economic globalization will lead to a convergence of corporate governance systems around the world has generated sub-stantial research interest. Authors influenced by the neo-liberal economic paradigms argue that various capitalist systems will converge to the Anglo-American system in the face of global economic, trade, and technological competition (for a summary, see Child, 2000). However, authors of the varieties of capitalism or the early neoinstitutional theory argue that diverse forms of capitalism will persist despite rapid globalization, reflecting institutional embeddedness and path dependency stemming from different historical trajectories, political-economic systems, and institutional logics, and that there is no single global standard to which all systems will converge (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Orru et al., 1997). In contrast to the opposing perspectives, Aguilera and Jackson (2003: 461) argued that ‘convergence and path dependence … may be false theoretical alternatives in trying to understand simultaneous processes of con-tinuity and change across national boundaries.’ On a similar note, Katz and Darbishire (2000) and Mills et al. (2008), who studied the changing industrial relations, argued for neither convergence nor divergence in institutions, systems, and organizations, but for converging divergences, a concept that embraces the coexistence of convergence and divergence.