Corporate Business Responsibility

The 2008/9 crisis in global commercial debt markets exposed glaring deficiencies in corporate and regulatory operational and strategic risk management systems. This collection provides an overview of how narrow conceptions of responsibility in corporate law, organizational practice and regulatory dynamics facilitated the crisis. The first section revisits the debates about the role of the corporation prompted by the publication of The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932). The second section explores why the conception of enlightened shareholder interest gained and retained potency despite demonstrable failure. The third section explores how the interaction between the foundational assumptions of corporate law and the (questionable) efficacy of shareholder control framed regulatory responses to the growth of financial capitalism. The fourth section examines ways in which excess can be restrained by the interaction between hard law, softer governance arrangements such as principles and, crucially, norms.

About the Author

Justin O'Brien is Research Professor in the Faculty of Law at the Queensland University of Technology, Australia