Constitutionalizing the Corporation

Abstract

Connecting and integrating the economics, organization, and management of the firm with other relevant perspectives in political science, constitutional law, and constitutional political economy, this paper revisits the nature of the corporation as a particular type of constitutional contract. The baseline argument is to show how far we can go in redesigning and democratizing the corporate form of business “societas” by using only organizational effectiveness criteria before any ethical or political options. In fact, on the basis of those (re-)foundations, the analysis addresses the questions of why the form of government of that societas should be (and in part already is in various corporate law systems) a “republic of rightholders”; who those “rightholders” should be; and which structures (organs and bodies) and decision and control procedures may sustain effective governance not only in terms of the representation of legitimate interests but also in terms of decision quality. The result is the specification of the requisite variety of “chambers” and within “chambers.”

Citation

Grandori, A. (2022), "Constitutionalizing the Corporation", Meyer, R.E., Leixnering, S. and Veldman, J. (Ed.) The Corporation: Rethinking the Iconic Form of Business Organization (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 78), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 57-76. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20220000078004