Currently, there exists a distrust of corporate activity in the continuing aftermath of the financial crisis and with increasing recognition of the threats of climate change and global, as well as national, inequalities. Despite efforts in the arena of corporate governance to address these, we are still beset with corporate scandals and witness companies facing large fines for their environmental and cost-cutting misdemeanours. Recognising that the usual responses to dealing with these corporate problems are not effective, this book asks whether the traditional form of the joint stock corporation itself lies at the heart of these problems. What are the features of the corporate form and how does its current regulation underscore these problems? Identifying such features provides a basis for the discussion to develop towards suggesting more progressive regulatory developments around the corporate form.



More fundamentally, this book investigates a diverse range of corporate governance models that are emerging as alternatives to the shareholder corporation, including employee-owned, cooperative and social enterprises. The contributors are leading scholars from various backgrounds including law, management and organisation studies, finance and accounting, as well as experienced professionals and policy makers with expertise in social and cooperative business models and the role of employees in the corporation.

Table Of Contents

Part I: Corporate Reform

1. Corporate Schizophrenia: The Institutional Origins of Corporate Social Irresponsibility 

Paddy Ireland

2. Destruction by Ideological Pretence: The Case of Shareholder Primacy 

Gordon Pearson

3. The Separate Legal Entity and the Architecture of the Modern Corporation 

Jeroen Veldman

4. Dismantling the Legal Myth of Shareholder Primacy: The Corporation as a Sustainable Market Actor 

Beate Sjåfjell

5. Climate Change, Business Transformation 

Mick Blowfield

6. Capitalism: Why Companies are Unfit for Social Purpose and How they Might be Reformed 

Lorraine Talbot

7. Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006: Desperate Times Call for Soft Law Measures 

Georgina Tsagas

8. Corporate Governance, Responsibility and Compassion: Why we should Care 

Charlotte Villiers

9. Beyond Shareholder Primacy-The Case for Workers' Voice in Corporate Governance 

Janet Williamson

10. The New Corporate Movement 9

Nina Boeger



Part II: Enterprise Diversity

11. Recognising Facts in Economic Democracy 

David Erdal

12. Can Reduced Shareholder Power Enable Corporate Stakeholder Accountability? The Case of Triodos Bank 

Stuart Cooper

13. The Arrival of B Corps in Britain: Another Milestone Towards a More Nuanced Economy? 

David Hunter

14. Danish Foundations and Cooperatives as Forms of Corporate Governance: Origins and Impacts on Firm Strategies and Societies 

Peer Hull Kristensen and Glenn Morgan

15. What's in a Name? Reflections on the Marginalisation of the Co-operative as an Organisational Form 

Anita Mangan

16. The Internationalisation of the FairShares Model: Where Agency Meets Structure in US and UK Company Law 

Rory Ridley-Duff

17. The Politics, Policy, Popular Perception and Practice of Social Enterprise in the Twenty-first Century 

Dan Gregory

18. Lessons from the Community Interest Company 

Nina Boeger, Sara Burgess and Julie Ellison