Panelist: Paul S. Adler, U. of Southern California Panelist: Gerald F. Davis, U. of Michigan Panelist: Joel Gehman, U. of Alberta Organizer: Stephan Leixnering, WU Vienna Organizer: Kevin Levillain, Mines ParisTech Panelist: Renate Elisabeth Meyer, WU Vienna & Copenhagen Business School Organizer: Blanche Segrestin, Mines ParisTech Panelist: Blanche Segrestin, Mines ParisTech Organizer: Jeroen Veldman, Cass Business School, City U. of London
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The corporation has been guiding thinking of economic organization for more than a century. Today, however, it stands at a crossroads. As economic, social, and environmental failures of capitalism are widely identified as structural deficits associated with the corporation, scholars are developing post-corporate scenarios for economic organization, such as digital platforms or local communities (Davis, 2016a, 2016b). Other responses continue to draw on the corporate form, seeking to improve it. Alternative forms of corporations, such as Certified B Corporations and Benefit Corporations, have emerged to integrate social and environmental objectives into the corporate agenda (Gehman & Grimes, 2017). Building upon this model, the French government is about to redefine the corporate purpose by highlighting the responsibility to pursue social or environmental innovation as part of the raison d’être of corporations (Segrestin, Levillain, & Hatchuel, 2018). These new developments follow the Germanic example, where the purpose of the corporation has always included the pursuit of the public interest – a feature that is clearly missing in prevailing understandings of the modern corporation (Leixnering, Meyer, & Doralt, 2018; Veldman et al., 2016). Integrating different perspectives on post-corporate scenarios as well as corporate alternatives, this PDW discusses whether the future of economic organization will still be guided by corporate forms or rather turn out as post-corporate. Doing so, it invites panelists and participants to reflect on the role and theory of the corporation, and how these shape our modern economies as well as our societies (Adler, forthcoming). |