A growing number of businesses are social enterprises, with a dual mission of generating profits for investors while also pursuing various social goods. Statutes have created new legal forms of business association to be used by social enterprises, most prominently benefit corporations, but also...

After the financial crisis, there has been considerable debate about the role of corporations in society. It has become broadly accepted that corporations - particularly the world's largest publicly traded corporations – need to be governed with respect for the society and the environment....

Since the 1970s, the relationship between productive property, and the state and individual has been contested in Marxist-Leninist nations. Though China has moved to permit robust private activity, and the private aggregations of capital in corporate form, Cuba has strictly adhered to...

Some of the most recognizable companies, including Land O’Lakes, REI, the Associated Press, Ace Hardware, and State Farm Insurance, are organized as cooperatives – firms owned by their suppliers, workers, or customers. Yet aside from isolated areas of the economy, cooperatives constitute...

The nineteenth century saw the standardization and rapid spread of the modern business corporation around the world. Yet those early corporations differed from their contemporary counterparts in important ways. Most obviously, they commonly deviated from the one-share-one-vote rule that is...

Grossman and Hart’s prominent 1986 article on “The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration” focuses, as its title suggests, on which of a firm’s input suppliers are, or are not, efficiently owned by the firm. This brief essay, prepared for a...

In view of the decline in gain sharing by corporations with American workers over the last forty years, advocates for American workers have expressed growing interest in allowing workers to elect representatives to corporate boards. Board level representation rights have gained appeal because...

Following the last comprehensive reform of company law, the funding channels provided for the public companies have been greatly increased through the removal of certain limitations on the atypicity principle in creating share classes. The traditional dichotomy between shares (venture capital)...

There are at least two types of companies: conventional capitalist companies or Profit Maximizing Firms (PMFs) and, on the other hand, companies managed by their workforce or Labour-Managed Firms (LMFs). The entrepreneurial structures in Spain which include this second type are worker...

This paper aims to test and to assess if a change in accounting standards affecting the definition of equity and liability in cooperatives matters, as well as to shed light on the possible determinant factors. In face of the new accounting standards, cooperatives had to reclassify members'...