{"title":"Transcending The Corporation","authors":"B. Morgan","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.28","url":null,"abstract":"Recent developments in experiments with legal organizational forms are injecting diversity into the relative monoculture of the corporate form. Two threads are of particular interest in this chapter. The first concerns the creation of hybrid legal structures for “social enterprise.” The second stems from a revival of interest in cooperative structures, particularly in tandem with the digital economy. The chapter places these two threads in dialogue with Simon Deakin’s recent stimulating argument that the commons provides the most convincing conceptual foundation for understanding corporate governance. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of governance experimentation in small-scale food enterprises. Since debates around the production and distribution of food increasingly center around the notion of food as a “commons,” this provides a useful illustration of some of the key implications of the chapter’s argument.","PeriodicalId":223219,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Corporation","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123776410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"English East India Company-State and The Modern Corporation","authors":"P. Stern","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.3","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter offers an analysis of the history of the English East India Company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in light of its value for understanding the modern corporation. Considering the various ways in which the Company has been of interest to business and economic historians, this chapter considers instead the implications of its history on understanding the nature of the modern multinational as a global political actor and thus the ways in which both domestic and international law must engage with the problem of the political subjectivity, jurisdictional scope, and sovereign ambitions of non-state, especially corporate, actors.","PeriodicalId":223219,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Corporation","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129128183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Evolution of Corporate Form","authors":"S. Deakin","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.11","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on the evolution of the concept of corporate personality in English law. Recent developments in experiments with legal organizational forms are injecting diversity into the relative monoculture of the corporate form. Two threads are of particular interest in this chapter. The first concerns the creation of hybrid legal structures for “social enterprise.” The second stems from a revival of interest in cooperative structures, particularly in tandem with the digital economy. The chapter places these two threads in dialogue with Simon Deakin’s recent stimulating argument that the commons provides the most convincing conceptual foundation for understanding corporate governance.","PeriodicalId":223219,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Corporation","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123863999","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corporate Responsibility and the Embedded Firm","authors":"Cynthia A. Williams","doi":"10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780198737063.013.25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780198737063.013.25","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines institutional and political economy accounts of corporate social responsibility debates in law and business, and how those debates have been used to shape the social expectations of business and the view of firms as either oriented toward shareholders or stakeholders. The chapter brings a number of disciplinary perspectives to bear on the study of the regulatory evolution and relationship between firms, corporate governance, and labor in the transformation from industrial to finance capitalism. It engages with Karl Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness while reassessing the foundations of corporate social responsibility as an emerging trend. Ultimately it concludes that the problem to be solved in the corporate social relationship is the deeper one of the business corporation being conceptualized in narrow economic terms, and the fiduciary duties of directors being misconceptualized as to maximize shareholder wealth, even as the business corporation acts throughout the world today as a powerful social and political actor.","PeriodicalId":223219,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Corporation","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121138661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Theorizing the Corporation","authors":"Teemu Ruskola","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.13","url":null,"abstract":"Economic theories of the firm, and the legal analyses of corporation law that build on them, are ordinarily formulated in universal terms, as if “the firm” were in fact a singular category of economic organization. This chapter takes as its starting point the diverse and globalized world in which we exist. Beyond the familiar forms of “Western” capitalism—which itself is plural—much of the development in East Asia and Latin America, for example, has been characterized by strongly statist forms of capitalism, challenging many of the standard assumptions about the proper boundary between the market and the state. In the late twentieth century, “Confucian capitalism” became the rallying cry in many East Asian economies, suggesting that delimiting a clear boundary between the market and the family might be equally difficult. Insofar as these developments reconfigure the division of labor among the institutions of the state, the market, and the family, how can we account for them theoretically?","PeriodicalId":223219,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Corporation","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130461862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corporations, Organization, and Human Action","authors":"J. Chanlat","doi":"10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780198737063.013.21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780198737063.013.21","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers the major developments in management thought over the last century. How market logic, new interpretations in economics, and the development of the entrepreneurial corporation have impacted on management thinking are explored. The management science that has resulted projects a questionable conception of humanity. This analysis questions the anthropological foundations of the dominant conceptions of human agency, and how this has impoverished the understanding of both people and organizations.A broader anthropology is traced through the European literature on the advance of management, which identifies the essential capacity of humanity to contribute to collaborative endeavor and engage in meaningful social production.","PeriodicalId":223219,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Corporation","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121925107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corporations as Sempiternal Legal Persons","authors":"Lynn A. Stout","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.29","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.29","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers the corporation as a time machine, providing intergenerational equity, and intergenerational efficiency. That is, the corporation can be understood as a legal innovation that historically has functioned as a means of transferring wealth forward and sometimes backward through time, for the benefit of present and future generations. In this fashion the board-controlled corporation promotes both intergenerational equity and intergenerational efficiency. Logic and evidence each suggest, however, that the modern embrace of “shareholder value” as the only corporate objective and “shareholder democracy” as the ideal of corporate governance is damaging the corporate form’s ability to serve this economically and ethically important function.","PeriodicalId":223219,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Corporation","volume":"108 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122852668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corporations In The Clouds?","authors":"Danielle Logue","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.20","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers the historical changes that have occurred in the way corporations engage in innovation, conceptualizations of disruptive innovation, and the consequences of recent developments in technology, models and movements for the corporate form (particularly boundaries), practices, and leadership. It discusses how the notion of disruption innovation has developed, and summarizes the main innovation dichotomies that have emerged from years of academic research on how corporations innovate. It then focuses on the implications of open innovation and business model innovation for the corporation, and details current responses of corporations to disruptive innovation. The chapter concludes with a consideration of how disruptive innovations are impacting the role and significance of the corporation in modern society.","PeriodicalId":223219,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Corporation","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125396727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Dutch East India Company","authors":"P. Frentrop","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.2","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter analyzes the experience of the Dutch East India Company, the first company in which thousands of investors participated. This dispersed shareholder base gave rise to two new institutional developments: the spontaneous growth of a lively securities market and agency problems as investors soon had reason to complain about lack of strategic focus, lack of dividends, lack of accountability, self-enrichment by managers, fraud, and mismanagement. Nonetheless, after two hazardous first decades—helped by the exit that the stock market provided to investors—the company managed to stay in existence for almost two centuries although the agency problems were only partially addressed.","PeriodicalId":223219,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Corporation","volume":"34 1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123146976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corporate Law as a Solution to Team Production Problems","authors":"Margaret M. Blair","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198737063.013.10","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explains the team production problem as described in economic theory, and presents the argument, first developed by Blair and Stout, that boards of directors serve as a solution to the team production problem. The chapter reviews the legal structure and duties of boards of directors under corporate law to show that directors are called on to make many of the most conflict-laden decisions that must be made in corporations. Thus many of the details of corporate law are consistent with the idea that a primary function of boards of directors is to mediate among important competing interests in the corporation and thereby resolve or head off disputes. The chapter discusses new empirical evidence about what directors do and how they affect the performance of corporations.","PeriodicalId":223219,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of the Corporation","volume":"287 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133783502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}