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Full-Text Articles in Law
Why Corporate Purpose Will Always Matter, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Why Corporate Purpose Will Always Matter, Lyman P.Q. Johnson
Scholarly Articles
Business persons and lawyers (and law professors) perennially struggle over the question whether a business corporation does or should have a purpose other than advancing the interests of shareholders. After briefly setting the stage by describing the dispute over what the positive law of corporate purpose really is and the normative argument over what corporate purpose should be, this short article takes a different turn. It addresses why, in a dynamic, democratic, pluralist society, the foundational issue of corporate purpose remains so important and will not (and should not) go away. However adamantly divergent descriptive and prescriptive positions are held, …
Contractual Stakeholderism, Kishanthi Parella
Contractual Stakeholderism, Kishanthi Parella
Scholarly Articles
In 2019, the Business Roundtable announced its commitment to all corporate stakeholders—consumers, employees, suppliers, and communities—and not just shareholders. This announcement has reawakened an old debate over corporate social responsibility. Stakeholderism advocates argue that corporate leaders must consider the interests of the various stakeholders impacted by corporate decision-making. Stakeholderism critics challenge this view, expressing concerns that stakeholderism will magnify managerial agency costs, chill regulation, risk inauthenticity, and lead to impractical solutions.
This Article proposes “contractual stakeholderism” to operationalize stakeholderism in accordance with the views of its advocates but in a way that is attentive to the concerns of its critics. …
Corporate Governance And The Feminization Of Capital, Sarah C. Haan
Corporate Governance And The Feminization Of Capital, Sarah C. Haan
Scholarly Articles
At the start of the twentieth century, women made up a small proportion of shareholders in American publicly traded companies. By 1956, women were the majority of individual shareholders. Although this change in shareholder gender demographics happened gradually, it was evident early in the century: Before the 1929 stock market crash, women shareholders had come to outnumber men at some of America’s largest and most influential corporations, including AT&T, General Electric, and the Pennsylvania Railroad. This Article synthesizes information from a range of historical sources to reveal an overlooked narrative of corporate history—the feminization of capital, or the transformation of …