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Articles 1 - 21 of 21
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Effects Of Shareholder Primacy, Publicness, And "Privateness" On Corporate Cultures, Donald C. Langevoort
The Effects Of Shareholder Primacy, Publicness, And "Privateness" On Corporate Cultures, Donald C. Langevoort
Seattle University Law Review
My conundrum question is this: suppose managerialism triumphed in the governance wars so as to regain its desired level of autonomy from shareholder pressures for boards and managers—would we then expect to see a cultural shift inside corporations toward greater honesty and civil engagement, and if so, why? A helpful diagnostic question is to ask how managers currently construe shareholder and market primacy. Have they internalized it as a value or do they instead resent the demands? My argument here leans more toward resentment, though my contribution is more about how to develop a credible hypothesis than how to prove …
Unsubstantiated Allegations And Organizational Culture, Eugene Soltes
Unsubstantiated Allegations And Organizational Culture, Eugene Soltes
Seattle University Law Review
When organizations investigate allegations of misconduct, they routinely determine that some allegations are unsubstantiated. A variety of factors may contribute to the conclusion that an allegation does not warrant substantiation, including a lack of supporting evidence, false claims against others within the organization, and a failure to conduct a thorough inquiry. This Article examines the potential value of examining unsubstantiated allegations of misconduct to better understand an organization’s culture. I show that unsubstantiated allegations provide insight into where future violations may occur, employees’ proclivity to engage in subsequent violations, and firm productivity. I conclude by discussing ways that organizations can …
The Problem With Predators, June Carbone, William K. Black
The Problem With Predators, June Carbone, William K. Black
Seattle University Law Review
Both corporate theory and sex discrimination law start with presumptions that CEOs seek to advance legitimate ends and design the internal organization of business enterprises to achieve such ends. Yet, a growing literature questions why CEOs and boards of directors nonetheless select for Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and toxic masculinity, despite the downsides associated with these traits. Three scholarly literatures—economics, criminology, and gender theory—draw on advances in psychology to shed new light on the construction of seemingly dysfunctional corporate cultures. They start by questioning the assumption that CEOs—even CEOs of seemingly mainstream businesses—necessarily seek to advance “legitimate” ends. Instead, they suggest …
"Tone At The Top" And The Communication Of Corporate Values: Lost In Translation?, Alfredo Contreras, Aiyesha Dey, Claire Hill
"Tone At The Top" And The Communication Of Corporate Values: Lost In Translation?, Alfredo Contreras, Aiyesha Dey, Claire Hill
Seattle University Law Review
Many firms that were involved in large-scale corporate frauds had strong corporate codes of ethics and values statements. These firms were also subject to considerable social pressures to be mindful of their reputations; frauds are “negative reputational events.” Notably, the frauds not infrequently involved possible, or even outright, illegality. Why didn’t these strong forces—strong codes of ethics and firms’ clear interest in maintaining a good reputation, as well as the fear of legal liability—do more to prevent the frauds? It seems hard to imagine that serious misdeeds could occur if the top management was committed to preventing them. But top …
Why Do Good People Do Bad Things? A Multi-Level Analysis Of Individual, Organizational, And Structural Causes Of White-Collar Crime, Dr. Joe Mcgrath
Why Do Good People Do Bad Things? A Multi-Level Analysis Of Individual, Organizational, And Structural Causes Of White-Collar Crime, Dr. Joe Mcgrath
Seattle University Law Review
This Article draws on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) complaint against Serageldin, the transcript for his plea hearing, and the transcript for his sentencing hearing. The SEC’s complaint provides a prosecutorial account of the fraud. It also includes actual extracts from Serageldin’s recorded phone calls at Credit Suisse which provide a realtime narrative of the fraud. The court transcripts detail Serageldin’s own account of the fraud and give a biographical account of Serageldin’s life, provided by his mother, who offered character evidence on his behalf. These perspectives allowed for the recasting of the SEC’s account of the fraud and …
Regulating Banking Ethics: A Toolkit, David Zaring
Regulating Banking Ethics: A Toolkit, David Zaring
Seattle University Law Review
There is little doubt that culture matters for institutions—entities ranging from economics departments to soccer teams spend plenty of time thinking about the cultures they hope to foster—and that culture is also exceedingly hard to measure or define. Regulators now have had a decade since the financial crisis to operationalize their approach to guiding and improving the ethics and culture of the banks they oversee. Understanding what they have chosen to do makes it easier to assess the value of the effort to make cultural transformation an important part of a regulatory program. It also offers lessons to the broader …
Developing Fiduciary Culture In Vietnam, Brian Jm Quinn
Developing Fiduciary Culture In Vietnam, Brian Jm Quinn
Seattle University Law Review
This Article examines Vietnam’s efforts during the past two and a half decades to build up its legal infrastructure during its transition from a centrally planned to a market economy. In particular, this Article will focus on the development of legal and regulatory infrastructure to support the development of the corporate sector and fiduciary culture in Vietnam. In thinking about corporate law, I do not intend to single out this particular area of law as somehow special in the context of transition. In fact, its commonness and generality are what makes the experience of the development of corporate law and …
In The Name Of Shareholder Value: Origin Myths Of Corporations And Their Ongoing Implications, Karen Ho
In The Name Of Shareholder Value: Origin Myths Of Corporations And Their Ongoing Implications, Karen Ho
Seattle University Law Review
Part I of this Article analyzes some of the contemporary critiques of, and debates around, shareholder value in order to illustrate why many of these contestations demonstrate underlying gaps or problematic assertions in the history and politics of shareholder value, especially if they are delimited by the narrow legal frames and neoliberal assumptions of corporations. It also provides the context necessary to explicate and ground why shareholder primacy and ownership assumptions are historically and legally flawed, and how financial values and assumptions continue to be championed (and financial power elided), despite the recent implosions of shareholder value. Part II expands …
Management Culture And Surveillance, J.S. Nelson
Management Culture And Surveillance, J.S. Nelson
Seattle University Law Review
As the modern workplace increasingly adopts technology, that technology is being used to surveil workers in ways that can be highly invasive. Ostensibly, management uses surveillance to assess workers’ productivity, but it uses the same systems to, for example, map their interpersonal relationships, study their conversations, collect data on their health, track where they travel on and off the job, as well as monitor and manipulate their emotional responses. Many of these overreaches are justified in the name of enterprise control. That justification should worry us. This Article aims to make us think about how surveillance is being used as …
Bank Culture And The Official Sector: A Spectrum Of Options, Michael Held, Thomas M. Noone
Bank Culture And The Official Sector: A Spectrum Of Options, Michael Held, Thomas M. Noone
Seattle University Law Review
If you think culture is too squishy, please hear us out. In Part I of this Article, we set out what we mean by culture. In Part II, we explain why we are interested in culture and why it matters to us now. In Part III, we will survey the work of other public authorities in their efforts to address culture. In our view, these efforts fall into several categories along a spectrum from more advisory to more prescriptive. We do not endorse any particular method. All of these efforts are useful attempts to address a common problem: repeated ethical …
The Character Of The Business: Looking Through "Broken Windows" For Liability In Mass Shootings & Other Third-Party Criminal Acts, Madison Shepley
The Character Of The Business: Looking Through "Broken Windows" For Liability In Mass Shootings & Other Third-Party Criminal Acts, Madison Shepley
Seattle University Law Review
Mass violence and third-party criminal acts are increasing in prevalence, and Washington State's current prior incidents liability analysis does not fully address public policy concerns of safety. This Comment argues for an expansive standard of the definition of character of the business that incorporates a sociological understanding of the effects of an atmosphere of crime. It provides an overview of the various state analyses for determining liability for third-party criminal conduct and breaks down how states have incorporated the concept of character of the business as a factor in liability analysis, ultimately turning to a discussion of how the implementation …
Domestic Asset Protection Trusts: Ushering In The Klackaba Era, Cheyenne Vankirk
Domestic Asset Protection Trusts: Ushering In The Klackaba Era, Cheyenne Vankirk
Seattle University Law Review
The growth in the U.S. economy has allowed Americans to increase their savings--but how? A novel approach has emerged in seventeen states: domestic asset product trusts (DAPTs). DAPTs are self-settled spindthrift trusts that allow the settlor to retain a beneficial interest in the trust while removing it from the reach of future creditors. Through the lens of the favorable ruling in Klackaba v. Nelson, this Note addresses why DAPTs should be regarded as an effective method of protecting a settlor’s money and argue for more states to follow suit.
General Data Protection Regulation (Gdpr): Prioritizing Resources, Jennifer Dumas
General Data Protection Regulation (Gdpr): Prioritizing Resources, Jennifer Dumas
Seattle University Law Review
This Article will discuss and analyze the years of preparation for the GDPR and provide recommendations for dealing with the GDPR forevermore. It will assess whether the preparation and panic were worth it. In other words, was the time, expense, and distraction my peers and I expended and experienced over the past years proportionate to the requirements and impact of the GDPR? Further, was the high level of preparation and panic many legal departments in countless companies undertook and experienced appropriate now that we have had a chance to see the initial impact of the GDPR?
Requiem For Cyberspace: The Effect Of The European General Privacy Regulation On The Global Internet, Steven Tapia
Requiem For Cyberspace: The Effect Of The European General Privacy Regulation On The Global Internet, Steven Tapia
Seattle University Law Review
The dream of a perpetual, limitless, non-dimensional space is an idea that has transfixed clergy, philosophers, and poets for ages. Whether it is called “heaven,” “the afterlife,” “nirvana,” or another linguistic stand-in, the dream of a dimension beyond the bounds of time, space, and the laws of nature seems as universal as any concept ever. From its initial development in the 1970s (as a military, academic, and governmental experiment in creating a wholly alternative means of communication capable of surviving catastrophic failures of any parts of the communications conduits) until essentially now, the Internet seemed to be the closest incarnate …
The Rise And Fall (?) Of The Berle–Means Corporation, Brian R. Cheffins
The Rise And Fall (?) Of The Berle–Means Corporation, Brian R. Cheffins
Seattle University Law Review
This Article forms part of the proceedings of the 10th Annual Berle Symposium (2018), which focused on Adolf Berle and the world he influenced. He and Gardiner Means documented in The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932) what they said was a separation of ownership and control in major American business enterprises. Berle and Means became sufficiently closely associated with the separation of ownership and control pattern for the large American public firm to be christened subsequently the “Berle–Means corporation.” This Article focuses on the “rise” of the Berle–Means corporation, considering in so doing why ownership became divorced from control …
The ‘Berle And Means Corporation’ In Historical Perspective, Eric Hilt
The ‘Berle And Means Corporation’ In Historical Perspective, Eric Hilt
Seattle University Law Review
This Article presents new evidence on the evolution of the business corporation in America and on the emergence of what is commonly termed the “Berle and Means corporation.” Drawing on a wide range of sources, I investigate three major historical claims of The Modern Corporation: that large corporations had displaced small ones by the early twentieth century; that the quasi-public corporations of the 1930s were much larger than the public corporations of the nineteenth century; and that ownership was separated from control to a much greater extent in the 1930s compared to the nineteenth century. I address each of these …
Corporate Lessons For Public Governance: The Origins And Activities Of The National Budget Committee, 1919–1923, Jesse Tarbert
Corporate Lessons For Public Governance: The Origins And Activities Of The National Budget Committee, 1919–1923, Jesse Tarbert
Seattle University Law Review
There is a peculiar disconnect between the way specialists view the 1920s and the way the decade is understood by non-specialists and the general public. Casual observers tend to view the 1920s as a conservative or reactionary interlude between the watershed reform periods of the Progressive Era and New Deal. Although many scholars have abandoned the traditional view of the 1920s, their work has not yet penetrated the generalizations of non-specialists. Even readers familiar with specialist accounts portraying the New Era as the age of “corporate liberalism” or the “Associative State” tend to view these concepts as just another way …
Quasi Governments And Inchoate Law: Berle’S Vision Of Limits On Corporate Power, Elizabeth Pollman
Quasi Governments And Inchoate Law: Berle’S Vision Of Limits On Corporate Power, Elizabeth Pollman
Seattle University Law Review
This Berle X Symposium essay gives prominence to distinguished corporate law scholar Adolf A. Berle, Jr. and his key writings of the 1950s and 1960s. Berle is most famous for his work decades earlier, in the 1930s, with Gardiner Means on the topic of the separation of ownership and control, and for his great debate of corporate social responsibility with E. Merrick Dodd. Yet the world was inching closer to our contemporary one in terms of both business and technology in Berle’s later years and his work from this period deserves attention.
Inconsistencies In Combatting The Sex Trafficking Of Minors: Backpage’S Deceptive Business Practices Should Not Be Immune From State Law Claims, Jacqueline Hackler
Inconsistencies In Combatting The Sex Trafficking Of Minors: Backpage’S Deceptive Business Practices Should Not Be Immune From State Law Claims, Jacqueline Hackler
Seattle University Law Review
Under federal law, the CDA has created a loophole for pimps and johns to exploit minors through the Internet. This Note uses Backpage as an example of how interactive computer services consistently evade liability under the current language of the CDA, and examines the need for an amendment to the language of the CDA. This Note argues that an interactive computer service should be held responsible under state law if it helps create the content, thus becoming an “information content provider” under the CDA. Part I provides the groundwork for what sex trafficking is and its relationship to prostitution. Additionally, …
Assessing The Assessment: B Lab’S Effort To Measure Companies’ Benevolence, Michael B. Dorff
Assessing The Assessment: B Lab’S Effort To Measure Companies’ Benevolence, Michael B. Dorff
Seattle University Law Review
For benefit corporations to persuade their various audiences that they are as beneficial for society as they claim, they need reliable assessments of their social performance. Even if assessments were not required by most states’ benefit corporation statutes, it is difficult to imagine the benefit corporation form could gain credibility without them. Creating measurement tools for these assessments poses the twin challenges of balancing simplicity against validity and weighing vision against inclusiveness. This article examines how B Lab’s popular assessment tool engages these challenges.
Repricing Limited Liability And Separate Entity Status, William H. Clark Jr., D. Alicia Hickok
Repricing Limited Liability And Separate Entity Status, William H. Clark Jr., D. Alicia Hickok
Seattle University Law Review
In this Article we discuss how U.S. entity law has evolved in recent decades so that (i) limited liability has become available to the owners of any form of business organization, and (ii) all forms of business organizations are now seen as having the status of entities separate from their owners. Those changes have occurred without significant consideration of their consequences or what they mean for the public policies underlying entity law. At the same time, there is an increasing awareness by businesses that promotion of social benefits and/or reduction of externalities is in the firm’s best interests. There has …