Bulgaria: the Rise of Capitalism and Actors’ Rationality

Corporate governance inevitably reflects the social and economic environment in which the main actors play. Different types of social changes shape the functioning of corporate governance, regardless of formal structure. This chapter deals with this relationship. More specifically, it examines the relationship between the transformation of social structures and the economic behavior of corporate actors. One may distinguish three types of changes performed in the name of socioeconomic transformation: (a) replacement of top figures of the sociopolitical structure with no considerable structural change; (b) gradual transformation of the social institutional order but within the same basic social configuration, including configuration of major political forces; and (c) the evolution of a basic social configuration and institutional social order. The Bulgarian transformation presents a mixture of the first and second types of change; yet only the third type is the one where real social development (in the Weberian sense) takes place (Schluchter, 1981). The fact that social change in Bulgaria was only partial influences the nature of corporate governance and corporate behavior, and contributed to the long-lasting domination of political logic over economic relations. As the result, the main actors at the corporate level continue to be under the pressure of the predominating sociopolitical configuration.