Book contents
- Reviews
- The Cambridge Handbook of Corporate Law, Corporate Governance and Sustainability
- The Cambridge Handbook of Corporate Law, Corporate Governance and Sustainability
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Forewords
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Global Business and Fragmented Regulation
- Part II Corporate Law, Financial Markets and Sustainability
- 6 The History of Shareholder Primacy, from Adam Smith through the Rise of Financialism
- 7 Corporate Governance and the Political Economy of the Company
- 8 Taming Unsustainable Finance
- 9 The International Order of Corporate Taxation
- Part III Corporate Law, Corporate Governance and Sustainability: Case Studies
- Part IV Potential Drivers for Change
- Conclusion
- Index
7 - Corporate Governance and the Political Economy of the Company
from Part II - Corporate Law, Financial Markets and Sustainability
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2019
- Reviews
- The Cambridge Handbook of Corporate Law, Corporate Governance and Sustainability
- The Cambridge Handbook of Corporate Law, Corporate Governance and Sustainability
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Forewords
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Global Business and Fragmented Regulation
- Part II Corporate Law, Financial Markets and Sustainability
- 6 The History of Shareholder Primacy, from Adam Smith through the Rise of Financialism
- 7 Corporate Governance and the Political Economy of the Company
- 8 Taming Unsustainable Finance
- 9 The International Order of Corporate Taxation
- Part III Corporate Law, Corporate Governance and Sustainability: Case Studies
- Part IV Potential Drivers for Change
- Conclusion
- Index
Summary
This chapter argues that the legal architecture of the company obfuscates the political relationship between shareholders and employees and transforms captured value from employees into a transferable and fungible property form. It sets out this claim within a Marxian analysis of the political economy mapped onto the legal architecture of the company. Following on from this analysis, the chapter also demonstrates that recent initiatives that exhort shareholders to govern the company and to monitor company executives – through, for example, the rapidly proliferating Stewardship Codes – attempt to subvert the legal and economic nature of modern shareholders as rentiers, to ill effect.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
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