Template-type: ReDif-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Iterson,Ad,van
Author-workplace-name: NIBOR 
Title: The development of national governance principles in The Netherlands
Abstract: This paper explores how the connections between governance principles, collective actors and workplace relations have developed in the Dutch business system. In order to identify the governance principles (Kristensen, 1997) which regulate the formation and interaction of social groupings in the Netherlands, attention will first be directed to the geographical and socio-economical characteristics of late-medieval `Holland'' and, next, to the early history of the Republic of the Netherlands (17th century) when the rebellious Dutch provinces gained unity and identity in their combat against the Spanish overlordship and the ubiquitous water, and when merchant elites grasped the opportunities offered by the expanding oversees trade and the favourable location of the maritime part of the Netherlands. It will be argued that the development of governance principles and the formation of collective economic and institutional actors in the Netherlands, must be understood in terms of: a) the late-medieval and early-modern agrarian and commercial activities (cattle-farming, fishing, and trading), which were not governed by a feudal owner class or centralised kingdom, but supported by municipal bourgeois (`burghers''), b) the winning of land from the sea and securing it through dikes and dams, which has seen the rise of partly voluntary associations, founded on the cooperative principles of quasi-government through peer control, and, c) the emergence of large trade companies, `proto-MNCs'', which were coordinated by a group of `Heeren'' (`Gentlemen''): rather collegiate `management teams'' representing the interests of local and regional governments. These phenomena and processes have generated a distinctively Dutch pattern of constituting and regulating social groups which continues to dominate work organisation and workplace relations in the Netherlands. The central regulatory or governance principle that has become established can be summarised as the strong preference for compromise and consensus among peers, and I shall conclude the paper by a brief disciussion of how this has continued to influence the functioning of large complex organisations that developed in the 20th century.
Keywords: industrial organization ; 
Series: Research Memoranda
Creation-Date: 1997
Number: 008
File-URL: http://edocs.ub.unimaas.nl/loader/file.asp?id=269
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 65517
Handle: RePEc:unm:umanib:1997008