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2 results

  • Chapter 2 - Corporate law theory and debates

  • Stephen Bottomley, Australian National University, Canberra, Kath Hall, Peta Spender, Australian National University, Canberra, Beth Nosworthy, University of Adelaide
  • Book:
    Contemporary Australian Corporate Law
    Published online:
    11 September 2025
    Print publication:
    25 September 2025, pp 52-79

  • Summary

    In this chapter, we discuss a range of perspectives that fall under the umbrella term ‘corporate theory’. These theories address three questions:

    1. 1. What is the corporation, and from where does it gain its political and social legitimacy?

    2. 2. What is the purpose of the corporation, and whose interests should it serve?

    3. 3. How, if at all, should the exercise of power by – and within – corporations be regulated, and by whom?

    These are inter-related questions and some theories help to answer more than one of them. Each theory also says something about one or other of the four perennial issues introduced in Chapter 1. Thinking about corporations and corporate law, whether it be through one of the approaches described in this chapter or some other perspective, means making a choice about the range of values represented in each of these distinctions. As one writer has emphasized:

    To subscribe to a particular theory of the corporation often reflects a particular political attitude about corporate activity and correspondingly implies that corporations should be treated in a certain way.

    This chapter surveys the main examples of corporate theory. While each author of this book has their own theoretical preference, we try o put our views on hold and invite the reader to consider their own position.

  • 6 - Contested Identities

  • Edited by Roger E. Backhouse, University of Birmingham, Philippe Fontaine, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan
  • Book:
    A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences
    Published online:
    05 September 2014
    Print publication:
    22 September 2014, pp 183-210

  • Summary

    In 2007, when the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) proposed a new classification in which "history of economic thought" was moved from "economics" to "history, archeology, religion and philosophy", some in the field were up in arms, protesting that this amounted to its destruction. This chapter shows that the changing identity problem of the history of economics cannot be understood without taking account of the changes affecting economics from 1945, especially as the claim that the history of economics is economics has, for many of its practitioners, been central to the legitimation of the field up to the present. Until the 1950s or so, economists had usually attached importance to history, including both economic history and the history of economic theories, but as the discipline became more technical and acquired a more scientific self-image, this view found fewer and fewer supporters within the profession.