Accepted views of a classic academic work can quite readily distort the original text. Michael Jensen and William Meckling's widely cited 1976 article “Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure” exemplifies the pattern. The article has been cited as a key...

The American public company has undergone a fascinating transformation since the mid-20th century. Up to this point, however, a detailed analytical synthesis of the changes involved has been lacking. The Public Company Transformed (Oxford University Press, 2018) correspondingly examines the...

Team production theory, which Margaret Blair developed in tandem with Lynn Stout, has had a major impact on corporate law scholarship. The team production model, however, has been applied sparingly outside the United States. This paper, given as part of a symposium honoring Margaret Blair’s...

A 1970 New York Times essay on corporate social responsibility by Milton Friedman is often said to have launched a shareholder-focused reorientation of managerial priorities in America's public companies. The essay correspondingly is a primary target of those critical of a shareholder-centric...

Corporate purpose is currently hotly debated amidst much speculation that American public companies are forsaking shareholder centrality in favor of a wider set of priorities. Despite this speculation, systematic analysis of the future of corporate purpose is lacking. This paper correspondingly...

Although corporate pyramids are currently commonplace world-wide and although there have been “noteworthy pyramiders” in American business history, this controversial form of corporate organization is now a rarity in the United States. The conventional wisdom is that corporate pyramids...

Many concerned about UK corporate governance have urged those who own equity in listed companies to forsake a traditional bias in favour of passivity and act as responsible, engaged ‘owners'. The recent financial crisis has given added impetus to such calls, with the notion of ‘stewardship'...

In 2008, share prices on U.S. stock markets fell further than they had during any one year since the 1930s. Does this mean corporate governance “failed”? This paper argues “no”, based on a study of a sample of companies at “ground zero” of the stock market meltdown, namely the 37...