What is the corporation and why does it matter?

Abstract

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: What is the corpora-on and why does it ma3er?Abstract 'Management' is widely and deeply embedded in 'corporations'. Yet in many studies of management and organization the corporation is an in<luential but shadowy and largely unaccountable presence. Rarely is the modern, capitalist corporation thematized. This article contributes to remedying this omission by attending to how the corporation is a product of three imaginaries: legal, economic, and political. In the post-medieval order, the legal imaginary made possible the construction of the corporate form; the economic imaginary has promoted an expansion of this form and shaped its subsequent development; and, <inally, the political imaginary offers a way of appreciating how politics, including the power of the state, is key to (i) the rise of the modern corporation, and (ii) to a recognition of how the primacy of the political in the formation and development of the modern corporation is articulated through, and obscured behind, the dominance of legal and economic imaginaries. Attending to the three imaginaries, it is argued, is central to a thorough comprehension of the modern corporation, a concomitant appreciation of its deeply divisive consequences, and lastly, to the development of policies designed to counteract its malign effects.

Organization studies of inequality, with and beyond Piketty

“…While for Piketty, corporate wealth disproportionately falls to those who control the organization -the supermanagers -recent research has made a politicaleconomic issue of how the incorporation of the corporate legal person provides for the legally sanctioned minimisation of the executive's tax liability (Veldman and Willmott, 2013;Veldman, 2013;Corporate Reform Collective;. Bebchuk and Fried (2004) have also considered the corporate legal form to be a significant reformist stumbling block.…”

Corporation: Reification of the Corporate Form

“…However, the reduction all organizational forms to an aggregation of individuals went well beyond the 'bracketing' of the corporate form as a social construct. In practice, this approach denied the conceptual possibility for an ontological status for the corporate form as a construct in the legal, economic, and political imaginaries (Veldman and Willmott, 2013). The denial of the possibility for an explanation of this separate status is problematic when we take a closer look at the historical development of this construct.…”

“…This perception started to shift during the nineteenth century when the pooling of capital by increasing numbers of shareholders created a growing separation between shareholders and 'the company' (Veldman and Willmott, 2013). To accommodate the increasing distance of shareholder from ownership functions, shareholders were separated from the assets, operations, and risks of the corporation by shifting these onto the separate legal entity.…”

“…As such, the corporate form presents a highly problematic social construct, which Second, the weak theoretical foundation of the corporate form and the resulting multiplicity of referents are quite relevant beyond academic theorizing. In both the legal and the economic imaginaries (Veldman and Willmott, 2013) the corporate form constitutes a reified singular construct with attributions of agency, ownership, and rights. At the same time, we find that the dominant perception of the corporate form in contemporary law and economics and in corporate governance theory strongly denies the ontological status of this construct.…”

Book Review: Rejoinder to Veldman’s review of Capitalism, Corporations and the Social Contract: A Critique of Stakeholder Theory

“…In recent years, Veldman and various co-authors have made a sustained attempt to persuade organisation theorists to attend to the question of what a corporation is and the consequences that are particular to this organisational form (Veldman, 2011;Veldman and Parker, 2012;Veldman, 2013;Veldman and Willmott, 2013). This work is part of a stream of research that challenges the 'nexus-of-contracts' theory of the firm and, by emphasising the legal independence of corporations from shareholders, convincingly undermines the orthodox view that a corporation's purpose is the maximisation of shareholder value (Ireland, 1999(Ireland, , 2003Stout, 2002Stout, , 2012Robè, 2011Robè, , 2012Deakin, 2012;Ciepley, 2013).…”