The Paradox of Disclosure

Abstract: The paper presents the development and outlines initiatives taken by the Swedish government, and the European Union in order to address issues of declining trust and confidence for the business society. The paper will be structured and partly analyzed based on institutional theory, introducing regulative, normative and cognitive perspectives of the issues. Relevant corporate theories are creating fundament for the applied institutional theory to follow. Several legislative proposals will be comprehensively presented in the regulative pillar of the theory, accompanied with the Swedish Code of Corporate Governance in the normative. The cognitive pillar of the institutional theory is accommodating the patterns that the initiatives aim to address, and therefore extra aspects of trust and behavioural patterns is outlined herein. Furthermore, the model will be redesigned and used to emphasize the ability for an institution to affect other pillars than those where access is approved. The proposals for legislation is targeting aspects of enhanced transparency, through disclosure standards and deciding exclusivity by corporate organs on executive compensation. Focus is to create comprehensive understanding of the development for the actions taken by the government and the European Union. Conflicts between business purposes and intervening legislative initiatives, and there from deriving contra productive consequences will be presented. Tendencies and trends, more or less connected with stricter legislative and regulative standards are briefly introduced.