Over the last decade, societal scrutiny about the role and power of businesses has increased. From politicians to protest movements, from investors to influencers, many actors have geared their demands to reform corporate capitalism and render its power more accountable to the public, whether it be for the sake of the climate transition, the safe development of artificial intelligence, world-wide availability of vaccines, or sustainable finance. These demands also raise the question of how the institutional agency of business corporations should be revised, and what goals they should be made to pursue. In response to such pressures, the US Business Roundtable in 2019 famously dropped shareholder value maximization from its ‘corporate purpose’ statement and moved to stakeholder capitalism. The EU legislated to enforce corporate reporting on sustainability issues and responsibility for due diligence in the supply chains. But in recent years, these movements towards greater social embedding of business also met with resistance. US republicans pushed back against investors following ESG criteria (‘woke capitalism’), Exxon Mobile sued its activist shareholders. All in all, the role of business is politicized, with uncertain outcomes.
In academia, these developments have led to new debates about corporations’ role in politics, corporate personhood and purpose, corporate governance and different corporate forms transforming decision-making structures such as social enterprises, coops and steward-owned companies. How to interpret the current moment? Have corporations become too powerful? How are they run, and for whom should they be run? What avenues for reform are open? To address these issues, an interdisciplinary conversation is needed. This conference brings together scholars working in a diversity of disciplines, such as law, philosophy, economics, political science, management and organization studies, and business ethics.