Corporate decision making: contending perspectives and their governance implications

Recently in this Journal, Cutting and Kouzmin postulated a three‐phase group decision‐making process. This paper demarcates, within that framework, a set of contending corporate board decision‐making perceptions. It’s premise is that how directors determine how investigations should be conducted, evidence should be assessed, and the truth should be decided depends on their epistemological and ontological predisposition. The philosophy of the social sciences offers four contending epistemological and ontological lens used to describe, analyze, evaluate and judge their corporate world. Each is fundamentally flawed. What is needed, then, are reflexive and pluralized corporate governance structures and processes that can accommodate a variety of epistemological and ontological imperatives. The broad conclusion drawn is that good corporate governance requires directors to recognize the limitations of their understanding of corporate governance reality, to treat all truth claims skeptically, and never to resort to self‐deception or self‐delusion just to avoid unpleasant corporate governance truths.