corporate social responsibility
Towards a critical theory of the corporate form
In recent years, critical research on the corporation has sprouted in a number of different disciplines, wherein the corporation (or critical research on the corporation) has not earlier been a focal point or a specific point of interest: History (Stern, 2011); intellectual history (Jessen, 2012; 2020); corporate law (Ireland, 1999; 2010); management and organization studies (Veldman, 2013; Veldman and Willmott, 2013); geography (Barkan, 2013); political science (Ciepley, 2013); as well as an issue on corporate governance here in ephemera (Jansson, Larsson-Olaison
Corporate social responsibility and the supposed moral agency of corporations
1.
The classic – and still largely dominant[1] – account of corporate governance has it that governance ought to operate in the interests of the stockholders, and that, in Milton Friedman’s (1970) words, ‘the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits’. This ought is grounded primarily legally: the executive has a contractual fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders as their ‘agent’.
The political economy of corporate governance
Corporate governance – as a functionalist approach to the promotion of efficiency and wealth creation and an antidote to stagnation and corporate scandals – has been much in vogue for a few decades now. Influential publications on corporate governance rank among the most cited in the social sciences.
Anarchism and business ethics: the social responsibility of the anarchist is to destroy business
Introduction
Milton Friedman, the influential Chicago School scholar and Nobel prize winner, wrote ‘The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits’ (henceforth ‘The Social Responsibility’), an essay which has become a highly influential text within contemporary business ethics. Friedman’s work holds a ‘determinate position of prestige; organizing and mobilizing so many theoretical and practical conceptions of what might be the responsibilities of business’ (Jones, 2007: 512).
The political economy of corporate governance
Issue Editors: Ulf Larsson Olaison, Andreas Jansson, Jeroen Veldman and Armin Beverungen
Local solidarity
This Special Issue of ephemera incorporates a diverse set of case studies: Luhman’s study of the potential of worker cooperatives as a tool for social change, Marens’ account of labor’s pension fund strategies, Poonamallee’s consideration of an Indian town’s struggles to avoid the perils of globalization, and Whalen’s analysis of labor friendly economic development efforts in Western New York State.
