Czech Corporate Governance in the Light of its History and the Influence of the G20/OECD Corporate Governance Principles

This article maps the development of Czech corporate law after 1989 against the backdrop of the gradual change of private law and its paradigms as well as considering especially the influence and use of corporate governance soft law. It describes some of the economic, political and social reasons that slowed down or marginalized the relevance of OECD Corporate Governance Principles after the transition of Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic to democratic law. At the same time, the article attempts to show that while the gradual recodification of corporate law, in particular corporate governance rules, did not provide much support for the use of corporate governance codes, it nevertheless reflected the relevant rules and recommendations for statutory rules, thus, partially attaining similar goals. The authors of this article therefore believe that the lack of the practical development of some aspects of corporate governance or corporate social responsibility is often not due to the inadequacy of legal regulation but is rather the result of an overestimation of the personal characteristics of entrepreneurs, their reluctance to introduce complex governance structures and a rigid or very conservative interpretive positivism.