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Governing corporations with ‘strangers’: Earning membership through investor stewardship.

Nordberg, D., 2024. Governing corporations with ‘strangers’: Earning membership through investor stewardship. Philosophy of Management, 23, 85-107.

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40926-023-00237-4

DOI: 10.1007/s40926-023-00237-4

Abstract

Despite decades of theorising and empirical research, the problems of corporate governance seem intractable, particularly the relationships between investors and companies. The thought experiment in this paper asks us to look at the problem through a fresh lens. It draws on the quaint British legal custom of calling shareholders “members”, and then uses the political philosopher Michael Walzer’s idea of membership in states, clubs, neighbourhoods, and families to draw lessons for the corporate world. This paper suggests that seeing how Walzer conceives “strangers” in a polity, with fewer rights but a path to membership, lets us rethink shareholder rights as something to be earned, through engagement and commitment, that is, through stewardship. Rethinking what membership of a company might mean points to a pragmatic escape from short-termism without institutional reform.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:1740-3812
Uncontrolled Keywords:corporate governance; short-termism; ethics; membership; Michael Walzer; investor stewardship
Group:Bournemouth University Business School
ID Code:38549
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:22 May 2023 15:16
Last Modified:24 May 2024 11:21

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