Rethinking Private Authorityexamines the role of non-state actors in global environmental politics, arguing that a fuller understanding of their role requires a new way of conceptualizing private ...authority. Jessica Green identifies two distinct forms of private authority--one in which states delegate authority to private actors, and another in which entrepreneurial actors generate their own rules, persuading others to adopt them.
Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence spanning a century of environmental rule making, Green shows how the delegation of authority to private actors has played a small but consistent role in multilateral environmental agreements over the past fifty years, largely in the area of treaty implementation. This contrasts with entrepreneurial authority, where most private environmental rules have been created in the past two decades. Green traces how this dynamic and fast-growing form of private authority is becoming increasingly common in areas ranging from organic food to green building practices to sustainable tourism. She persuasively argues that the configuration of state preferences and the existing institutional landscape are paramount to explaining why private authority emerges and assumes the form that it does. In-depth cases on climate change provide evidence for her arguments.
Groundbreaking in scope,Rethinking Private Authoritydemonstrates that authority in world politics is diffused across multiple levels and diverse actors, and it offers a more complete picture of how private actors are helping to shape our response to today's most pressing environmental problems
Limited liability companies form the backbone of our modern economy. However, there is a persistent danger of moral hazard on the part of directors and shareholders, particularly in closely held or ...private companies. Like all developed legal systems, English and German law both provide mechanisms designed to protect creditors from such risks. This book investigates some of these mechanisms, including the avoidance of pre-insolvency acts, capital maintenance and creditor-regarding duties of directors. By analysing the different conceptual and doctrinal perspectives inherent in the English and German systems, this book seeks to advance a discourse between audiences with different legal backgrounds. It will be an invaluable guide for those wishing to understand how the protective mechanisms operate and interact with each other, and how they do so in quite different ways in the two jurisdictions.
In recent decades, antitrust investigations and cases targeting mergers -- including those involving Google, Ticketmaster, and much of the domestic airline industry -- have reshaped industries and ...changed business practices profoundly. And yet there has been a relative dearth of detailed evaluations of the effects of mergers and the effectiveness of merger policy. In this book, John Kwoka, a noted authority on industrial organization, examines all reliable empirical studies of the effect of specific mergers and develops entirely new information about the policies and remedies of antitrust agencies regarding these mergers. Combined with data on outcomes, this policy information enables analysis of, and creates new insights into, mergers, merger policies, and the effectiveness of remedies in preventing anticompetitive outcomes.After an overview of mergers, merger policy, and a common approach to merger analysis, Kwoka offers a detailed analysis of the studied mergers, relevant policies, and chosen remedies. Kwoka finds, first and foremost, that most of the studied mergers resulted in competitive harm, usually in the form of higher product prices but also with respect to various non-price outcomes. Other important findings include the fact that joint ventures and code sharing arrangements do not result in such harm and that policies intended to remedy mergers -- especially conduct remedies -- are not generally effective in restraining price increases. The book's uniquely comprehensive analysis advances our understanding of merger decisions and policies, suggests policy improvements for competition agencies and remedies, and points the way to future research.
In this collection of essays, the author provides a compelling new framework for thinking about the moral obligations that private actors in a market economy have toward each other and to society. In ...a sharp break with traditional approaches to business ethics, the author argues that the basic principles of corporate social responsibility are already implicit in the institutional norms that structure both marketplace competition and the modern business corporation. In four new and nine previously published essays, the author articulates the foundations of a “market failures” approach to business ethics. Rather than bringing moral concerns to bear upon economic activity as a set of foreign or externally imposed constraints, this approach seeks to articulate a robust conception of business ethics derived solely from the basic normative justification for capitalism. The result is a unified theory of business ethics, corporate law, economic regulation, and the welfare state, which offers a reconstruction of the central normative preoccupations in each area that is consistent across all four domains. Beyond the core theory, the author offers new insights on a wide range of topics in economics and philosophy, from agency theory and risk management to social cooperation and the transaction cost theory of the firm.
Get familiar with business sustainability in Asia Business Sustainability in Asia offers 12 chapters that cover different aspects of business sustainability with a keen focus on its implications in ...Asia. Anyone who is involved with business sustainability and corporate governance, the financial reporting process, investment decisions, legal and financial advising, assurance functions, and corporate governance education will be interested in this book. It examines business sustainability performance, reporting and assurance and their integration into strategy, governance, risk assessment, performance management, and the reporting process of disclosing governance, ethics, social, environmental, and economic sustainable performance. The book also highlights how people, businesses, and resources collaborate in a business sustainability and accountability model. • Develop an awareness and understanding of the main themes, perspectives, frameworks, and issues pertaining to corporate governance and business sustainability in Asia • Covers a variety of issues relevant to business sustainability in Asia • Authored by an expert who has written extensively on the subject • Understand why organizations worldwide recognize the importance of sustainability performance If you're a business leader, executive, auditor, or student looking to familiarize yourself with this emerging subject, Business Sustainability in Asia has you covered.
President Theodore Roosevelt once proclaimed, "Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions, and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work ...in harmony with those institutions." But while corporations are ostensibly regulated by citizens through their governments, the firms in turn regulate many aspects of social and political life for individuals beyond their own employees and the communities that support them. Corporations are endowed with many of the same rights as citizens, such as freedom of speech, but are not themselves typically constituted around ideals of national belonging and democracy. In the wake of the global financial collapse of 2008, the question of what relationship corporations should have to governing institutions has only increased in urgency. As a democratically sanctioned social institution, should a corporation operate primarily toward profit accumulation or should its proper goal be to provision society with needed goods and services?Corporations and Citizenshipaddresses the role of modern for-profit corporations as a distinctive kind of social formation within democratic national states. Scholars of legal studies, business ethics, politics, history, and anthropology bring their perspectives to bear on particular case studies, such as Enron and Wall Street, as well as broader issues of belonging, social responsibility, for-profit higher education, and regulation. Together, these essays establish a complex and detailed understanding of the ways corporations contribute positively to human well-being as well as the dangers that they pose.Contributors:Joel Bakan, Jean Comaroff, John Comaroff, Cynthia Estlund, Louis Galambos, Rosalie Genova, Peter Gourevitch, Karen Ho, Nien-hê Hsieh, Walter Licht, Jonathan R. Macey, Hirokazu Miyazaki, Lynn Sharp Paine, Katharina Pistor, Amy J. Sepinwall, Jeffery Smith, Jeffrey L. Sturchio, Greg Urban.
Drawing upon a wide range of sources of empirical evidence, historical analysis and theoretical argument, this book shows beyond any doubt that the private, profit-making, corporation is a habitual ...and routine offender. The book dissects the myth that the corporation can be a rational, responsible, 'citizen'. It shows how in its present form, the corporation is permitted, licensed and encouraged to systematically kill, maim and steal for profit. Corporations are constructed through law and politics in ways that impel them to cause harm to people and the environment. In other words, criminality is part of the DNA of the modern corporation. Therefore, the authors argue, the corporation cannot be easily reformed. The only feasible solution to this 'crime' problem is to abolish the legal and political privileges that enable the corporation to act with impunity.
The book analyzes two destination-based corporate tax models, their application to different types of digitalized business models, and their compliance with tax and data protection law frameworks.
This book develops tools for assessing corporate citizenship (CC), the concept that describes the political role of corporations in global governance. Building on theories in political science, ...corporate citizenship establishes a new role for the corporation in the global economy. The failure of many governments to provide basic rights for their citizens has given rise to the expectation that globally operating corporations should step in and fill governance gaps: for example, in the area of human rights. Today, many large multinational corporations claim to conduct business in a socially responsible manner, yet no tools exist to assess whether and to what degree they have indeed systematically revised their business practices to take on these new responsibilities. Managing Corporate Legitimacy addresses these research gaps by clarifying the role of the corporation as a private actor in global governance at conceptual and empirical levels; by contributing to our theoretical understanding of CC as a new phenomenon in globalization; and by furthering the development of appropriate approaches to CC in practice through its toolkit.
