Conceptions of the Corporation and the Prospects of Sustainable Peace

I begin this essay with a brief overview of the corporation in legal discourse. In this overview, I draw upon current corporate law scholarship, considering the notions of the corporation as (1) property, (2) person, (3) contract, and (4) community. Following this overview, I explore the particular significance of legal language, detailing some of the central ways the law constructs the world in which we live. The law plays this constructive role by constituting and transforming our understandings of "character," "culture," and "community." Examining the ways in which our basic corporate conceptions contribute to our understanding of these three central elements of the business environment brings into view how legal language can structure the sensibility and vision we bring to corporate law problems. Each conception of the corporation presents it in a certain light, giving to the corporation a certain "character." Each character thus presented is in turn intertwined with a culture - "a set of ways of claiming meaning" - that can justify a greater or lesser sense of community. My conclusion is that while the notions of the corporation as property and contract predominate in current corporate law scholarship, the conceptions of the corporation as person and community offer better prospects for the goal of sustainable peace. They do so because of the way they enlarge our sense of corporate responsibility for the harms associated with corporate undertakings. Because this greater sense of corporate responsibility works to eliminate or minimize such harms, it contributes to the corporation's ability to foster long-term cooperative relationships among all its stakeholders. Thus, if we wish corporations to contribute to the creation of a more peaceful world, legal discourse can help by revitalizing one of its old notions, the corporation as person, and more fully embracing a new one, the corporation as community.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39807/3/wp423.pd

Conceptions of the Corporation and the Prospects of Sustainable Peace

I begin this essay with a brief overview of the corporation in legal discourse. In this overview, I draw upon current corporate law scholarship, considering the notions of the corporation as (1) property, (2) person, (3) contract, and (4) community. Following this overview, I explore the particular significance of legal language, detailing some of the central ways the law constructs the world in which we live. The law plays this constructive role by constituting and transforming our understandings of "character," "culture," and "community." Examining the ways in which our basic corporate conceptions contribute to our understanding of these three central elements of the business environment brings into view how legal language can structure the sensibility and vision we bring to corporate law problems. Each conception of the corporation presents it in a certain light, giving to the corporation a certain "character." Each character thus presented is in turn intertwined with a culture - "a set of ways of claiming meaning" - that can justify a greater or lesser sense of community. My conclusion is that while the notions of the corporation as property and contract predominate in current corporate law scholarship, the conceptions of the corporation as person and community offer better prospects for the goal of sustainable peace. They do so because of the way they enlarge our sense of corporate responsibility for the harms associated with corporate undertakings. Because this greater sense of corporate responsibility works to eliminate or minimize such harms, it contributes to the corporation's ability to foster long-term cooperative relationships among all its stakeholders. Thus, if we wish corporations to contribute to the creation of a more peaceful world, legal discourse can help by revitalizing one of its old notions, the corporation as person, and more fully embracing a new one, the corporation as community.corporate theory, corporate governance, law and literature, jurisprudence

Business Teaching, Liberal Learning, and the Moral Transformation of Business Education

Business ethics often draws from the content of liberal arts disciplines, but rarely from the practice of liberal education. Reconceptualizing the relation of business and liberal education offers a new strategy for promoting ethics within business schools. Under this strategy, ethics develops into more than a supplement to established functional courses. It becomes the locus for a more significant moral transformation of business education

Persons, Property, and the Corporation: A Proposal for a New Paradigm

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Conceptions of the Corporation and the Prospects of Sustainable Peace

This Article examines the role of corporate law in promoting sustainable peace. The Author argues that corporate legal theory can make a distinctive contribution to a more peaceful world by exposing some deeper roots of corporate law doctrines. Beginning with a brief overview of the corporation in legal discourse, the Article addresses the corporation as property, person, contract, and community. Next, the Article explores the significance of legal language, detailing the ways the law, through language, constructs and impacts the character, culture, and community of society. The Article then analyzes the dominance that the property and contract conceptions of the corporation demonstrate over the person and community notions of the corporate entity. Using a specific case as an illustration of how basic understandings of the corporate entity affect the sense of corporate responsibility for corporate harms, the Author focuses on how the contract and property notions overwhelm the community notion of the corporation. Finally, the Article concludes that the person and community notions of the corporation offer the better prospects for the goal of sustainable peace by enlarging the sense of corporate responsibility for harms associated with corporate undertakings