Knut Sogner – författare

The pharmaceutical revolution that gathered pace in the 1930s delivered a plethora of almost magical new drugs such as penicillin, streptomycin, cortisone, and the birth control pill. This revolution grew from academic-business relationships in five countries: USA, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, and France. Many other countries tried and failed to replicate this success, yet a handful of Scandinavia companies made important breakthroughs in a narrow band of specialities. This is the story of how one Norwegian company-- Nyegaard & Co. --achieved international success from the 1970s onwards with a breakthrough product facilitating X-ray pictures of the soft tissues of the body. The company succeeded by harnessing research skills and creating scientific and business alliances abroad, building its own momentum step by step: the corporation as entrepreneur. It thereby broke with the conventional way a national medical ecosystem facilitated the crucial scientific progress. This is a story both of personal initiatives and great organizational transformations in several stages. In the 1950s, Nyegaard & Co. was a small hierarchical home market-oriented generics company. By the end of the 1990s, it had developed into a fairly large and multinational hierarchical company, preoccupied as much with shareholder value as scientific progress. It has also become a company that no longer had the same ability to innovate as before and therefore became merged into another one.

Corporate governance is not just about models of best practice organisation or prescriptions following laws or social conventions. Corporate governance is also about persons of power seeking performance, and they do so in ways that transcend structures and pre-conceived notions of the structural set-up of the business. This book emphasises the decision-making dimensions of corporate governance, placing it right in the messy middle of the ever-changing world of capitalism, focussing on the interplay between professional managers and shareholders. This book aims to bring together several fresh perspectives on the development of capitalism seen through the lens of corporate governance. It illustrates the role of intentionality and persons, both as a method with which to understand processes of change, but also as a principle with which to seek a deeper understanding of the corporate governance choices made. It will be of interest to researchers, academics and students in the fields of corporate governance and entrepreneurship, as well as practitioners and other audience interested in the evolution of capitalism and corporate culture.