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Conceptualizing the business corporation: insights from history

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2020

David Gindis
David Gindis*
Affiliation:
Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, HatfieldAL10 9AB, UK
*
Corresponding author. Email: d.gindis@herts.ac.uk
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Abstract

The purpose of this symposium is to shed light on the genealogy of the idea of a business corporation, an economic institution which has long been regarded with a mixture of awe and apprehension. Each of the four original contributions addresses the history of some of its key features. In the process, each contributor reveals some of the insights that history has to teach us regarding the central concepts that inform contemporary debates about the nature of the corporation, the contours of the corporation's purpose, the sources of corporate power, the functions of corporate law, the duties of directors, the status of shareholders, and the legitimacy of corporate rights.

Keywords

Business corporationcorporate personalityeconomic and legal historyhistory of economiclegal and political thoughtlimited liabilitymembership and governanceownership

JEL classification

O16: Financial Markets • Saving and Capital Investment • Corporate Finance and Governance B15: Historical • Institutional • Evolutionary N80: General, International, or Comparative K20: General N20: General, International, or Comparative
Type
Symposium on Corporations
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 16 , Issue 5 , October 2020 , pp. 569 - 577
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2020

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