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Article
Publication date: 16 January 2007

Richard C. Hoffman

The purpose of this study is to better understand the origins of modern corporate social responsibility. The paper seeks to examine some factors that enabled the new industrial…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to better understand the origins of modern corporate social responsibility. The paper seeks to examine some factors that enabled the new industrial corporation to expand its role in society.

Design/methodology/approach

Using institutional theory, this paper describes how some of the institutional characteristics of the modern corporation itself provided some opportunities or challenges in terms of gaining social legitimacy.

Findings

The institutional features of the corporation, its technology and management created new demands on the corporation by society. These in turn led to the development of such concepts of corporate social responsibility as: public relations, service, trusteeship, and public welfare.

Research limitations/implications

Future research on social legitimacy should focus on demands placed by the institutional characteristics of new organizations. Other research might include comparative studies of corporate legitimacy in Europe or Asia or an examination of the evolving role of managers from the role of welfare capitalist to trusteeship.

Practical implications

Institutions that adapt to changing demands have the best chance to survive. Firms that adopt new social activities are likely to have to sustain them in the long run.

Originality/value

This study is the first to argue that the features of the modern corporation itself stimulated some of the social activities it undertook. Contributions of scientific management scholars to the shaping of the emerging corporate role are also noted.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. 13 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1751-1348

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 27 January 2022

Jeroen Veldman and Hugh Willmott

We explore the significance of social ontology and its capacity to inform the specification of organizational status, architecture and capacities. We consider how different…

Abstract

We explore the significance of social ontology and its capacity to inform the specification of organizational status, architecture and capacities. We consider how different conceptions of social ontology are critical for explicating a range of epistemological and socio-economic questions concerning organizations and develop a research agenda oriented to studying these issues from the perspective of management and organization studies.

Details

The Corporation: Rethinking the Iconic Form of Business Organization
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-377-9

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 10 August 2015

Philip J. Stern

Ever since its introduction into the vernacular of imperial historiography over a half century ago, the concept of “informal empire” has had a profound influence on how historians…

Abstract

Ever since its introduction into the vernacular of imperial historiography over a half century ago, the concept of “informal empire” has had a profound influence on how historians have understood the size and nature of British expansion in the modern world. While offering a crucial corrective to definitions of empire that had focused exclusively on “formal” colonial holdings, such a division has also obscured other frameworks through which we might understand the contours of imperial power, while also underscoring traditional bifurcations between early modern and modern forms of empire. This paper suggests instead an approach that privileges schema that take into account the different institutional and constitutional forms that shaped imperial expansion, and specifically argues that the corporation was one such form, in competition with others including the monarchical and national state. Looking specifically at the early modern East India Company and its modern legacies, particularly George Goldie’s Royal Niger Company, it also suggests that institutional approaches that de-emphasize distinctions between behavioral categories, such as commerce and politics, allow the possibility of excavating deep ideological connections across the history of empire, from its seventeenth-century origins through the era of decolonization.

Details

Chartering Capitalism: Organizing Markets, States, and Publics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-093-7

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 May 2009

Xiangang Tian

The supervisory system of modern Chinese companies has basically adopted the supervisory board system of countries of continental law system. Certain disadvantages, however, exist…

Abstract

Purpose

The supervisory system of modern Chinese companies has basically adopted the supervisory board system of countries of continental law system. Certain disadvantages, however, exist in the system and the purpose of this paper is to identify those disadvantages and suggest changes.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper draws upon a consideration of the policy objectives and assesses the practical gaps in implementation through a consideration of case‐studies.

Findings

There are many functions and manifest functions of the supervisory board system of modern Chinese companies. Certain disadvantages, however, exist in this system: the postmortem nature of supervision causes the failure of timely supervision, and the externality of supervision leads to information asymmetry. Meanwhile, the functions of supervisory board are weakened by the fact that the law does not impose positive qualification requirements for supervisors and that the law has not laid down specific regulations for the effective deliverance of the company's financial and business information to the supervisors and the supervisory board. In order to guarantee the realization of the functions of the company's supervisory board, we should perfect in legislation the supervisory board system of our country, and at the same time strengthen the construction of company supervisory board system in our country and other relevant supervisory mechanism and supporting systems. Originality/value – This paper presents an analysis of “gaps” in policy implementation and might influence reform in this area.

Details

International Journal of Law and Management, vol. 51 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1754-243X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 December 1996

Omid Nodoushani

Posits that since the New Deal era, 1933‐1940, the theory of managerial revolution has sparked tremendous debate concerning the governance of the USA’s large corporations. Argues…

978

Abstract

Posits that since the New Deal era, 1933‐1940, the theory of managerial revolution has sparked tremendous debate concerning the governance of the USA’s large corporations. Argues that an interpretation of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, within the context of other works by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means, could raise profound insights in terms of a paradigm shift concerning the governance of big corporations in contemporary economy.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. 2 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-252X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 16 December 2016

Hideko Sakurai and Ayako Sendo

This study investigates an approach for business management based on social rationality, which is attained through a proper balance between profits from economic exchange and…

Abstract

Purpose

This study investigates an approach for business management based on social rationality, which is attained through a proper balance between profits from economic exchange and benefits from social exchange.

Methodology/approach

First, this study examines the economic rationalization process developed by the business corporation, which is a great innovation in the modern West, but criticized for dominating people through overwhelming capital and power. Second, social rationality is explained by focusing on the balance between economic exchange and social exchange. Third, the ethics and practices of traditional Japanese and Islamic business management are examined including their underlying social rationality in business and shared commonalities in business practices that circulate economic gains in their societies.

Findings

By encapsulating all the relevant elements drawn from traditional Japanese and Islamic business, four conditions were found which successfully establish socially rational management based on sharing and reciprocity: an appropriately life-sized economy; relation-oriented management; a market in which a profit-seeking exchange economy and a profit-cyclical gift economy coexist; autonomous associations that are independent from the control of both state and business corporations.

Research implications

This research reevaluates the rationality of management complying with business ethics, which has been kept in traditional and non-Western business practices. These management styles are considered to be incongruous with modern management philosophies that solely rely on economic gain, resulting in the neglect of significant cultural principles in modern management.

Practical/social implications

This chapter suggests a way to circulate the profits among people through sharing and reciprocity for the public to diminish external diseconomies and solve social problems such as poverty, pollution, war, and alienation through business.

Originality/value

This study presents a method of shifting the paradigm from economically rational to socially rational management, which is urgently required in current business practices worldwide.

Details

Finance and Economy for Society: Integrating Sustainability
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-509-6

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 6 December 2005

James E. Roper

Beginning with a characterization of ethics as what should be done “all things considered,” I reject the traditional “moral manager” model of business ethics and conventional…

Abstract

Beginning with a characterization of ethics as what should be done “all things considered,” I reject the traditional “moral manager” model of business ethics and conventional stakeholder analysis as ways of dealing with ethical issues in the context of large corporations, to which any viable approach to business ethics must apply. In light of my rejection of traditional approaches to the subject, business ethics stands in need of a new agenda. I suggest that what I call the “moral corporation” model provides a suitable framework, and I outline several issues that might characterize such an approach. Finally, I consider a challenge to my proposed reorientation of business ethics and conclude that it does not provide a reasonable alternative.

Details

Crisis and Opportunity in the Professions
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-378-5

Book part
Publication date: 27 January 2022

Blanche Segrestin, Armand Hatchuel and Kevin Levillain

In this paper, we propose a new conceptualization of the purpose of the corporation in relation to its activities. This conceptualization builds upon the existing distinction…

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new conceptualization of the purpose of the corporation in relation to its activities. This conceptualization builds upon the existing distinction between the corporation as a legal vehicle and the enterprise as an economic organization, but renews the approach of the enterprise. We argue that the enterprise is a peculiar historical form of economic organization that emerged in the late nineteenth century to not only produce but also create new goods and technologies. This creative purpose involved a new type of managerial authority, not grounded in corporate law, but institutionalized in other branches of law, such as labor law. The legitimacy of the managers relied on the premise that the enterprise’s creative power would be harnessed for collective progress. However, this new view of the enterprise was insufficiently conceptualized in the twentieth century and continued to be governed by standard corporate law. This allowed managers to be seen as agents of shareholders, and the purpose of collective progress to be replaced by the interests of shareholders. Our analysis has important implications for the purpose of the corporation. As enterprises become more innovative and impactful, we argue that they can no longer be governed by traditional corporate law. If the corporation remains the legal cloth for business activities, then its purpose must consider the nature and impacts of these activities. We therefore interpret the new legal forms of purpose-driven corporation as an appropriate framework to restore the enterprise and a collective purpose within corporate law.

Details

The Corporation: Rethinking the Iconic Form of Business Organization
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-377-9

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 27 January 2022

Olivier Butzbach

In the “shareholder primacy” (SP) view of the modern corporation, shareholders are endowed with ownership rights over the corporation. This view stems from the property rights and…

Abstract

In the “shareholder primacy” (SP) view of the modern corporation, shareholders are endowed with ownership rights over the corporation. This view stems from the property rights and agency theories of the business firm formulated by financial and business economists in the 1970s and 1980s, which subsequently fed into US corporate law debates. It relies on positive legal assumptions that have largely been debunked by legal scholars, and on normative economic ideas that are equally problematic. However, SP is still very influential – if not the dominant paradigm of corporate governance, especially in the United States. The goal of the present study is to come back to the theoretical debates around the foundations of the SP paradigm to seek to identify key ideational properties that may explain, in part, the resilience of such paradigm in policy, scholarship and business practice. In particular, this paper proposes that one important reason for the persistence of the SP ideology lies in the latter’s foundation on the radically contingent nature of shareholders’ claims over the corporation.

Details

The Corporation: Rethinking the Iconic Form of Business Organization
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-377-9

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 September 2021

Andy Higginbottom

This chapter investigates Marx’s Capital as a theoretical resource for analyzing both the form and content of the modern corporation. We assess two recent contributions critiquing…

Abstract

This chapter investigates Marx’s Capital as a theoretical resource for analyzing both the form and content of the modern corporation. We assess two recent contributions critiquing the corporation. The chapter argues that Marx advanced from his initial ambivalent comments on the form of the joint stock company and the credit system to a more categorical critique. We assess Marx’s concepts of the concentration and centralization of capital, fictitious capital and rent in analyzing the corporation. Next, we note Engels important contribution filling in from the early limited liability company to monopoly capital and modern imperialism. The chapter ends with two examples of how these concepts apply in concrete analysis. The work is highly preliminary and is intended to open a more theoretically informed approach to analysis and critique of the multinational corporation.

Details

Imperialism and Transitions to Socialism
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-705-0

Keywords

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