Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T07:24:16.125Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Governing the Global Corporation: A Critical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

In this article I provide a critical perspective on governing the global corporation. While the papers in the 2009 special issue of Business Ethics Quarterly explore the political role of corporations I argue that they lack a sophisticated analysis of power across institutional and actor networks. The argument that corporate engagement with deliberative democracy can enhance the legitimacy of corporations does not take into account the effects of institutional, material and discursive forms of power that determine legitimacy criteria. As a result corporate versions of citizenship mediate versions of social responsibility and morality, which are reflected in the institutional and political economic norms that are produced by this power/knowledge. In order to overcome the limits of corporate social responsibility there is a need to develop more democratic forms of global governance of corporations. A radical revisioning of democratic governance would also need to overcome the limits posed by sovereignty and would require new forms of multi-actor and multi-level translocal governance arrangements in an attempt to create forms of power that are more compatible with the principles of economic democracy.

Type
Responses to BEQ’s Special Issue on the Changing Role of Business in Global Society
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 2010 , pp. 265 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bakan, J. 2004. The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Toronto: Viking Canada.Google Scholar
Banerjee, S. B. 2000. “Whose Land Is It Anyway? National Interest, Indigenous Stakeholders and Colonial Discourses: The Case of the Jabiluka Uranium Mine,” Organization & Environment 13(1): 3–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banerjee, S. B. 2003. “Who Sustains Whose Development? Sustainable Development and the Reinvention of Nature,” Organization Studies 24(1): 143–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banerjee, S. B. 2007. Corporate Social Responsibility: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banerjee, S. B. 2008. “Necrocapitalism,” Organization Studies 29(12): 1–25.Google Scholar
Carroll, A. 1998. “The Four Faces of Corporate Citizenship,” Business and Society Review 100(1): 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Citigroup Equity Strategy 2006. Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer. Available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674229/Citigroup-Mar-5-2006-Plutonomy-Report-Part-2. Accessed December 20, 2009.Google Scholar
Dorsey, M. K. 2007. “Climate Knowledge and Power: Tales of Skeptic Tanks, Weather Gods, and Sagas for Climate (In)justice,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 18(2): 7–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elms, H., and Phillips, R. A. 2009. “Private Security Companies and Institutional Legitimacy. Corporate and Stakeholder Rresponsibility,” Business Ethics Quarterly 19(3): 403–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Held, D., and McGrew, A.A 2002. Governing Globalization. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hertz, N. 2001. The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy. London: Arrow.Google Scholar
Hiss, S. 2009. “From Implicit to Explicit Corporate Social Responsibility: Institutional Change as a Fight for Myths,” Business Ethics Quarterly 19(3): 433–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hsieh, N. 2009. “The Responsibility of Business to Promote Just Institutions,” Business Ethics Quarterly 19(2): 251–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kobrin, S. J. 2009. “Private Political Authority and Public Responsibility: Transnational Politics, Transnational Firms, and Human Rights,” Business Ethics Quarterly 19(3): 349–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krastev, I. 2002. “The Balkans: Democracy without Choices,” Journal of Democracy 13(3): 39–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Margolis, J. D., and Walsh, J. P. 2003. “Misery Loves Companies: Rethinking Social Initiatives by Business,” Administrative Science Quarterly 48: 268–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, J. W., and Rowan, B. 1991. “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structures as Myth and Ceremony,” in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, ed. Powell, W. W. and DiMaggio, P. J.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 41–62.Google Scholar
Michaelson, C. M. 2010. “Revisiting the Global Business Ethics Question,” Business Ethics Quarterly 20(2): 237–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ong, A. 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Pies, I., Hielscher, S., and Beckmann, M. 2009. “Moral Commitments and the Societal Role of Business: An Ordonomic Approach to Corporate Citizenship,” Business Ethics Quarterly 19(3): 372–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scherer, A. G., Palazzo, G., and Matten, D. 2009. “Introduction to the Special Issue: Globalization as a Challenge for Business Responsibilities,” Business Ethics Quarterly 19(3): 327–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidheiny, S. 1992. Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective on Development and the Environment. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Singer, P. W. 2004. Corporate Warriors and the Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Walker, A. 2009. Will Shell Pay out Change Nigeria Delta? Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8090822.stm. Accessed November 20, 2009.Google Scholar
Zadek, S. 2004. “The Path to Corporate Responsibility,” Harvard Business Review 82 (December): 125–32.Google ScholarPubMed
Zammit, A. 2003. Development at Risk: Reconsidering UN-Business Relations. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.Google Scholar