for future governance as we identify theories, actors, business models and contexts that acknowledge the diversity of corporate (governance) models in use that can guide innovative and transformative practices in the domain of corporate governance. Professor Corporate Governance and an Ethics Charlotte of Care Villiers In an article published in Business and Professor of Society in the late 1990’s William Company Frederick the following words: Law, paradigms tend to emerge “New University of when conventional ways of thinking Bristol no longer provide satisfactory answers or when normal science produces only humdrum answers. But because new paradigms suggest novel approaches, they typically encounter resistance.” He added that “corporate social performance theorizing has reached a crisis point, or very nearly a dead end. Few answers are emerging to the urgent pressures and crisis facing today’s business and society.” Indeed, we have witnessed since Frederick’s paper an intensification of the problems he identified and corporate and financial crises that have shattered the trust of citizens around the world. In this paper I suggest that we are still stuck at the point Frederick was describing twenty years ago. I also suggest that we have an opportunity to pick up on an emerging paradigm in the ethic of care and its close relative, feminist justice. Instead of fiddling the “while world burns” we might adopt the normative direction offered by this theoretical perspective and thereby achieve some of the goals envisioned such as improvement of market functioning and internalization of a corporation’s externalities. Janet Challenging Shareholder Primacy – Williamson the case for workers’ in Senior Policy corporate governance Officer, Economics and Social Affairs Department,
for future governance as we identify theories, actors, business models and contexts that acknowledge the diversity of corporate (governance) models in use that can guide innovative and transformative practices in the domain of corporate governance. Professor Charlotte Villiers Professor of Company Law, University of Bristol Corporate Governance and an Ethics of Care In an article published in Business and Society in the late 1990’s William Frederick the following words: “New paradigms tend to emerge when conventional ways of thinking no longer provide satisfactory answers or when normal science produces only humdrum answers. But because new paradigms suggest novel approaches, they typically encounter resistance.” He added that “corporate social performance theorizing has reached a crisis point, or very nearly a dead end. Few answers are emerging to the urgent pressures and crisis facing today’s business and society.” Indeed, we have witnessed since Frederick’s paper an intensification of the problems he identified and corporate and financial crises that have shattered the trust of citizens around the world. In this paper I suggest that we are still stuck at the point Frederick was describing twenty years ago. I also suggest that we have an opportunity to pick up on an emerging paradigm in the ethic of care and its close relative, feminist justice. Instead of fiddling “while the world burns” we might adopt the normative direction offered by this theoretical perspective and thereby achieve some of the goals envisioned such as improvement of market functioning and internalization of a corporation’s externalities. Janet Williamson Senior Policy Officer, Economics and Social Affairs Department, Challenging Shareholder Primacy – the case for workers’ in corporate governance
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