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La gouvernance d’entreprise, thématique restée longtemps marginalisée, a pris depuis une dizaine d’années une importance croissante. Ce sujet, traité sous différents angles a donné naissance à des théories contradictoires. Ces divergences résultent plus profondément de clivages idéologiques et philosophiques. Les idées philosophiques émanant d’auteurs tels que Machiavel, Kant, ou encore Locke et Marx, permettent de comprendre la diversité des approches théoriques. Les conceptions différentes à propos de la nature de l’homme et de la meilleure organisation de la société qui sont les leurs apparaissent irréconciliables, et rendent improbable la constitution d’un cadre théorique unifié.

Enterprise governance, its ideology and philosophy Corporate governance, as a subject, has long been marginalized. The number of articles dedicated to it has also dramatically increased in the past ten years. The field has been investigated in several dimensions, mainly in corporate strategy, in corporate finance and in organizational behavior. Thus, each academic discipline has set up some rather different theoretical views. But these differences also can be explained by old ideological and philosophical conflicts. Philosophic ideas from authors like Machiavel and Kant, or Locke and Marx are essential to understand the contemporaneous theories of corporate governance. They have irreconcilable points of view about the nature of man, and the optimal way to organize society. For this reason, a unification of governance theories will probably be a hard task.