Table of contents

Tackles one of the most enduring and contentious issues of positive political economy: common pool resource management.

Governance and Business Models for Sustainable Capitalism touches upon many of the central themes of today’s debate on business and society. In particular, it brings attention to a recurrent tension between efficiency, innovation, and productivity on the one hand, and fairness, equity, and sustainability on the other. The book argues that we need radical rethinking of business models and economic governance, beyond the classical doctrine, which sees social and ecological responsibility as lying with public-policy regulation of purely profit-seeking firms. In spite of the popular CSR agenda, business – as we know it today – is both too transient and too limited in its motivation to carry the regulatory burden. We need to adopt a much wider concept of 'partnered governance', where advanced states and pioneering companies work together to raise the social and environmental bar. The book suggests that civil engagements based on moral rather than formal rights, and amplified through the media, may provide a healthy challenge both to autocratic planning and to solely profit-centered commercialization. The book also proposes a triple cycle theory of innovation for sustainability: a novel framing of the efficacy of green and prosocial entrepreneurship as intertwined with political visions and supportive institutions. In addition, the book offers reflections on the ways in which further digital robotizaton may enable transition to an ‘Agora Economy’ where productive efficiency is combined with expanded civic freedoms. Aimed primarily at researchers, academics, and students in the fields of political economy, business and society, corporate governance, business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability, the book will additionally be of value to practitioners, supplying them with information regarding the challenges associated with the shaping of sustainable or ‘civilised’ market capitalism for a better world.

The corporate business enterprise is a core institution of capitalism. It holds immense political, economic, and cultural power in society. It mobilizes social and planetary resources to its utility in pursuit of private profit maximization and with little regard for social concerns. Its influence over so much of societal life and effects on the natural environment raise critical questions about the firm and its governance in democratic society. Various voices seek reforms of regulation and corporate governance practices to those shaped by the neoliberal policies persisting in the current decades. But prospects for amelioration within our current horizons of thinking appear elusive. This book contributes a distinctly social theoretical approach to the social problem of governing the firm. Its discussions complement debates in economics, politics, and law. Its critical social theorizations challenge conventional understandings of the firm and neoliberal legitimacies of its governance and posit alternatives. The book explores the social relations and moral fabric of the firm and the creativity of human action at work. It proposes a reimagined corporate governance premised on just recognition of that social vitality. It invites unprecedented collaboration for a robust participatory democracy for governing the firm and market action oriented to ecological and social sustainability.

Recent scandals involving large firms, in the US and elsewhere, have intensified discussion regarding the role and conduct of the corporation. The contributors to this book argue that much of this debate has taken too narrow a view of the issue of corporate governance, and question some of the key assumptions of economic models. Drawing on insights from a variety of fields, including management studies, organization studies, economics and finance, political science, sociology, psychology, and legal studies, the contributors argue that these models fail to take account of the varied and complex behaviour of actors within the corporation. Instead the organizational, cognitive, and motivational foundations of governance problems and possible solutions are re-worked to produce a broader conception of governance. The book contains chapters from leading international management scholars, including: Masahiko Aoki, Margaret Blair, John Child, Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra, Bruno Frey, Anna Grandori, Joseph Lampel, Ryon Lancaster, William Lazonick, Siegwart Lindenberg, Patrick Moreton, Margit Osterloh, Michael Piore, Andrea Prencipe, Suzana Rodrigues, Mark Roe, Giuseppe Soda, Steen Thomsen, Brian Uzzi, Paul Windolf, and Todd Zenger. Corporate Governance and Firm Organization provides an important contribution to the corporate governance debate, and will be essential reading for academics and graduate students of corporate governance, business and management, economics, finance, sociology, and law; Consultants, professionals, and policy-makers working in the area of corporate governance.

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