• Account for different conceptions of the corporation
• Understand the corporation as a political entity and actor
• Understand the political constitution of the corporation
• Analyze the corporate form and corporate power
• Discuss different approaches to transforming or reforming the corporation
• Critically assess the power of corporations as well as their proposed alternatives

The aim of this course is to make the student capable of critically analyzing and assessing the corporation as a political entity, the political constitution of the corporation, the corporate form as well as different critiques of the corporation and proposals for transforming or reforming it.

The corporation plays a dominant role in the global economy, accounting for a substantial proportion of the world’s top 100 economies as well as of global carbon emissions. Corporations wield massive political power and influence through lobbying and political campaigns. Corporations are also increasingly becoming powerful agents of social and economic development through Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Citizenship and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Corporations occupy a paradoxical role in our social and political order as both agents of innovation, growth, development and prosperity, as well as of inequality, whitewashing, tax evasion, financial crises, climate crisis and environmental disasters.

As a result of the negative externalities produced by corporations, and their political and economic power, debates about the regulation of corporate power, for instance of tech-giants, have proliferated in recent years. At the same time, a number of critiques of corporate power and suggestions for transformations of corporations are being voiced in these years from political parties and candidates, social movements, NGO’s and think-tanks, but also from actors such as the World Economic Forum and Business Roundtable.

The course argues that in order to understand the role of the corporation in our current political and economic situation, we need to understand it not merely as an economic entity, but as a political entity which is constituted politically and which wields political power both externally and internally. The course illuminates the political nature of the corporation in a three-fold way: 1) as politically constituted, thereby highlighting the interactions with states, law and other political organizations, and what this means for what a corporation is and the power it wields; 2) as exercising political power externally in a number of settings; and 3) as exercising political authority over its members and jurisdiction and what this means for the internal governance of corporations.

The course is divided into three parts. The first part discusses and introduces approaches with which to understand the corporation as a political entity. The second part investigates how the corporation wields political power and influence externally through for instance corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship. The third part investigates how the corporation wields political power internally over its members (employees) and jurisdiction. The course also offers discussions about how to transform or corporations through theories and cases of stakeholder corporate governance, foundation-, cooperatively-, or worker-owned corporations and workplace democracy.

The course is part of the series Advanced Studies Electives. It addresses students in their last year of their master who are looking for inspiration for their master thesis.

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. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Blair, M.M. (2013). Corporate Personhood and the Corporate Persona, University of Illinois Law Review, pp. 775-820.

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.

Mayer, C. (2021). The Future of the Corporation and the Economics of Purpose, Journal of Management Studies, 58(3), pp. 887-901.

Shamir, R. (2008). The age of responsibilization: on market-embedded morality, Economy and Society, 37(1), 1-19.