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2021/2022 KAN-CSOCV1038U Transforming the corporation
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| Transforming the corporation |
Course information |
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| Language | English |
| Course ECTS | 7.5 ECTS |
| Type | Elective |
| Level | Full Degree Master |
| Duration | One Semester |
| Start time of the course | Autumn |
| Timetable | Course schedule will be posted at calendar.cbs.dk |
| Study board |
Study Board for MSc in Social Sciences
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| Last updated on 08-02-2021 | |
Relevant links |
| Learning objectives | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
At the end of the course, students will be able
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| Course content, structure and pedagogical approach | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The aim of this course is to make the student capable of critically analyzing and assessing the corporation, the corporate form, the role of the corporation in the global economy as well as different critiques of the corporation and proposals for transforming it.
The multinational corporation plays a dominant role in the global economy, accounting for a dominant percentage of the world's top economies, wielding massive political power and increasingly becoming agents of social development through CSR, Corporate Citizenship and the UN SDGs. Corporations are both the agents of innovation, growth, development and prosperity, as well as of inequality, poverty, whitewashing, tax evasion, climate crisis and environmental disasters. The course offers the students the tools to understand and critically assess the corporation and corporate power by focusing on critical theories of the corporation from the vantage points of law, sociology, philosophy, critical political economy and management studies.
The first part of the course introduces the corporate form, its history, the contemporary dominance of the neoclassical understanding of the corporation in ‘the theory of the firm’, ‘agency theory’ and shareholder-value primacy as well as introducing to a political theory of the corporation. The second part takes a closer look at the corporation and its role in the global economy, and the third part investigates contemporary critiques of the corporation and corporate power as well as a variety of alternatives to and proposals to transform the corporation such as cooperatively- or worker-owned corporations and workplace democracy. |
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| Description of the teaching methods | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The course consists of lectures, in-class discussions, group work, joint readings and case discussions. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Feedback during the teaching period | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Students will receive feedback as part of ongoing teaching, group work, small presentations, discussions and case discussions. There will be an emphasis on student discussions and ongoing feedback. Also, office hours will provide an opportunity for student feedback. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Expected literature | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Baars, G. (2019). The corporation, law and capitalism: a radical perspective on the role of law in the global political economy. Leiden: Brill.
Baars, G. & Spicer, A. (Eds.) (2017). The Corporation: A Critical, Multi-Disciplinary Handbook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barkan, J. (2013). Corporate Sovereignty. Law and Government under Capitalism, Minnesota University Press.
Ciepley, D. (2013). Beyond public and private: Toward a political theory of the corporation. American Political Science Review, 107(1), 139-158.
Ferreras, I. (2017). Firms as political entities: Saving democracy through economic bicameralism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. |
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