Download or read book The Codetermination Bargains written by Ewan McGaughey and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does codetermination exist in Germany? Law and economics theories have contended that if there were no legal compulsion, worker participation in corporate governance would be 'virtually nonexistent'. This positive analysis, which flows from the 'nexus of contracts' conception of the corporation, supports a normative argument that codetermination is inefficient because it is supposed that it will seldom happen voluntarily. After discussing competing conceptions of the corporation, as a 'thing in itself', and as an 'institution', this article explores the development of German codetermination from the mid-19th century to the present. It finds the inefficiency argument sits at odds with the historical evidence. In its very inception, the right of workers to vote for a company board of directors, or in work councils with a voice in dismissals, came from collective agreements. It was not compelled by law, but was collectively bargained between business and labour representatives. These 'codetermination bargains' were widespread. Laws then codified these models. This was true at the foundation of the Weimar Republic from 1918 to 1922 and, after abolition in 1933, again from 1945 to 1951. The foundational codetermination bargains were made because of two 'Goldilocks' conditions (conditions that were 'just right') which were not always seen in countries like the UK or US. First, inequality of bargaining power between workers and employers was temporarily less pronounced. Second, the trade union movement became united in the objective of seeking worker voice in corporate governance. As the practice of codetermination has been embraced by a majority of EU countries, and continues to spread, it is important to have an accurate positive narrative of codetermination's economic and political foundations.
Download or read book Codetermination written by Hans G. Nutzinger and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional firm structures are currently undergoing drastic change. The changes that the traditional firm is currently undergoing will permit active involvement of labor at all levels of the firm's decision-making process, offer workers substantial job security, protect workers' firm specific investment against excessive losses, guarantee workers at least market rates of return on their human capital and will allow labor a major role in shaping the firm's work rules and the production environment. These changes pose an enormous challenge to practitioners and policy-makers alike. The difficulties of appropriately modeling the new codetermined firms are also formidable. The present collection of papers furnishes building blocks for a better analysis of complex firm structures. The present effort is designed to be a workbook, a point of departure on which new research and teaching is to be built, and a work of reference on what has already been accomplished.
Download or read book Reconstructing the Corporation written by Grant M. Hayden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern corporations contribute to a wide range of contemporary problems, including income inequality, global warming, and the influence of money in politics. Their relentless pursuit of profits, though, is the natural outcome of the doctrine of shareholder primacy. As the consensus around this doctrine crumbles, it has become increasingly clear that the prerogatives of corporate governance have been improperly limited to shareholders. It is time to examine shareholder primacy and its attendant governance features anew, and reorient the literature around the basic purpose of corporations. This book critically examines the current state of corporate governance law and provides decisive rebuttals to longstanding arguments for the exclusive shareholder franchise. Reconstructing the Corporation presents a new model of corporate governance - one that builds on the theory of the firm as well as a novel theory of democratic participation - to support the extension of the corporate franchise to employees.
Download or read book A Casebook on Labour Law written by Ewan McGaughey and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-29 with total page 997 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Casebook on Labour Law supports every university labour or employment law course in the UK, set within European Union and international law. It covers history and theory, contract and rights, participation, equality, and job security. It also has chapters on essential topics for modern labour policy: the right to vote for company boards, in work councils and pension funds, and laws to achieve full employment by ending underpaid underemployment. Each chapter summarises further reading from noteworthy books and journals, and follows a unified conceptual structure. This aims to transcend historic divisions between common law or statute, private or public, and national or international law. The book invites the reader to engage in the economic and social evidence about labour law's empirical consequences and political principles.
Download or read book Wall Street s War on Workers written by Les Leopold and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2024-02-22 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book gave me a new lens to see the world.”—Robert Krulwich, former co-host of WNYC’s Radiolab Addressing the pressing issues affecting everyday Americans during an election year is essential—and one of our nation's most profound challenges is the devastating impact of mass layoffs. Layoffs upend people’s lives, cause enormous stress, and lead to debilitating personal debt. The societal harm caused by mass layoffs has been known for decades. Yet, we do little to stop them. Why? Why do we allow whole communities to be destroyed by corporate decision-makers? Why do we consider mass layoffs a natural, baked-in feature of modern financialized capitalism? And what are our elected officials going to do about it? In Wall Street’s War on Workers, Les Leopold, co-founder of the Labor Institute, provides a clear lens with which we can see how healthy corporations in the United States have used mass layoffs and stock buybacks to enrich shareholders at the expense of employees. With detailed research and concise language, Leopold explains why mass layoffs occur and how our current laws and regulations allow companies to turn these layoffs into short-term financial gains. Original and insightful, Wall Street’s War on Workers places US labor practices in the broader context of our social and political life, examining the impact financial strip-mining and legalized looting are having on party politics, destroying the integrity of democratic institutions. Leopold expertly lays out how the proliferation of opioids coupled with Wall Street’s destruction of jobs in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin have led to widespread mass layoff fatalism. Democrats have unarguably lost the longstanding support of millions of urban and rural workers, and Leopold points out how party leaders have been wrong about the assumption that the white working class is becoming less progressive and motivated to abandon the Democratic Party by reactionary positions on divisive social issues. With deep analyses, stark examples, and surprisingly simple proactive steps forward, Leopold also asserts that: Surviving and thriving in a competitive global economy does not require mass layoffs. A new virulent, financialized version of American capitalism is policy driven. To end mass layoffs, Wall Street’s domination of our economy must end. The accepted “wisdom” about white working-class populism is wrong. Ending stock buybacks and changing corporate officers’ pay structures could eliminate mass layoffs. Mass layoffs are not the result of inevitable economic “laws” or new technologies like artificial intelligence. Both groundbreaking and urgent, Wall Street’s War on Workers not only offers solutions that could halt mass layoffs but also offers new hope for workers everywhere. "Leopold offers a contrarian yet compelling take on America’s “white working class” . . . [and says] Democrats in 2024 ignore this massive, potentially sympathetic voting bloc at their peril."—Booklist (starred review) "Wall Street's War on Workers [is] the book neither party wants you to read . . . [It] penetrates one of the chief media deceptions of the 21st century, namely that working-class voters are driven by racism and xenophobia, and not by a more simple, enraging motive: they’ve been repeatedly ripped off, by the wealthy donors to both parties."—Matt Taibbi
Download or read book Understanding the Company written by Barnali Choudhury and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-20 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the purpose of the company and its role in society? From their origin in medieval times to their modern incarnation as powerful transnational bodies, companies remain an important part of business and society at large. Drawing from a variety of perspectives, this book adopts a normative approach to understanding the modern company and provides insights into how companies should be conceptualized. It considers key topics such as the development of corporate theory, the rights and obligations of the company, and the means and ends of corporate governance. Written by leading experts of different jurisdictions, this book provides important international viewpoints on some of the most pressing corporate governance questions.
Download or read book The Corporation As Technology written by Christopher M. Bruner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction and overview -- Defining the corporation and Corporate Law -- Contextual drivers of difference -- Enduring controversies in Corporate Law -- The corporation as technology -- Corporate pathologies and corporate sustainability -- Re-calibrating governance : industry-by-industry approaches -- Re-imagining corporate accountability -- Conclusions.
Download or read book The Populist Temptation written by Barry Eichengreen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Populism of the right and left has spread like wildfire throughout the world. The impulse reached its apogee in the United States with the election of Trump, but it was a force in Europe ever since the Great Recession sent the European economy into a prolonged tailspin. In the simplest terms, populism is a political ideology that vilifies economic and political elites and instead lionizes 'the people.' The people, populists of all stripes contend, need to retake power from the unaccountable elites who have left them powerless. And typically, populists' distrust of elites shades into a catchall distrust of trained experts because of their perceived distance from and contempt for 'the people.' Another signature element of populist movements is faith in a savior who can not only speak directly to the people, but also serve as a vessel for the plain people's hopes and dreams. Going back to the 1890s, a series of such saviors have come and gone in the US alone, from William Jennings Bryan to Huey Long to--finally--Donald Trump. In The Populist Temptation, the eminent economic historian Barry Eichengreen focuses on the global resurgence of populism today and places it in a deep context. Alternating between the present and earlier populist waves from modern history, he argues that populists tend to thrive most in the wake of economic downturns, when it is easy to convince the masses of elite malfeasance. Yet while there is more than a grain of truth that bankers, financiers, and 'bought' politicians are responsible for the mess, populists' own solutions tend to be simplistic and economically counterproductive. Moreover, by arguing that the ordinary people are at the mercy of extra-national forces beyond their control--international capital, immigrants, cosmopolitan globalists--populists often degenerate into demagoguery and xenophobia. There is no one solution to addressing the concerns that populists raise, but Eichengreen argues that there is an obvious place to start: shoring up and improving the welfare state so that it is better able to act as a buffer for those who suffer most during economic slumps. For example, America's patchwork welfare state was not well equipped to deal with the economic fallout that attended globalization and the decline of manufacturing in America, and that played no small part in Trump's victory. Lucidly explaining both the appeals and dangers of populism across history, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand not just the populist phenomenon, but more generally the lasting political fallout that follows in the wake of major economic crises.
Download or read book Governing the Firm in the Social Interest written by Catherine Casey and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-02-20 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The corporate business enterprise is a core institution of capitalism. It holds immense political, economic, and cultural power in society. It mobilizes social and planetary resources to its utility in pursuit of private profit maximization and with little regard for social concerns. Its influence over so much of societal life and effects on the natural environment raise critical questions about the firm and its governance in democratic society. Various voices seek reforms of regulation and corporate governance practices to those shaped by the neoliberal policies persisting in the current decades. But prospects for amelioration within our current horizons of thinking appear elusive. This book contributes a distinctly social theoretical approach to the social problem of governing the firm. Its discussions complement debates in economics, politics, and law. Its critical social theorizations challenge conventional understandings of the firm and neoliberal legitimacies of its governance and posit alternatives. The book explores the social relations and moral fabric of the firm and the creativity of human action at work. It proposes a reimagined corporate governance premised on just recognition of that social vitality. It invites unprecedented collaboration for a robust participatory democracy for governing the firm and market action oriented to ecological and social sustainability.
Download or read book Middle Tech written by Paula Bialski and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-21 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why software isn’t perfect, as seen through the stories of software developers at a run-of-the-mill tech company Contrary to much of the popular discourse, not all technology is seamless and awesome; some of it is simply “good enough.” In Middle Tech, Paula Bialski offers an ethnographic study of software developers at a non-flashy, non-start-up corporate tech company. Their stories reveal why software isn’t perfect and how developers communicate, care, and compromise to make software work—or at least work until the next update. Exploring the culture of good enoughness at a technology firm she calls “MiddleTech,” Bialski shows how doing good-enough work is a collectively negotiated resistance to the organizational ideology found in corporate software settings. The truth, Bialski reminds us, is that technology breaks due to human-related issues: staff cutbacks cause media platforms to crash, in-car GPS systems cause catastrophic incidents, and chatbots can be weird. Developers must often labor to patch and repair legacy systems rather than dream up killer apps. Bialski presents a less sensationalist, more empirical portrait of technology work than the frequently told Silicon Valley narratives of disruption and innovation. She finds that software engineers at MiddleTech regard technology as an ephemeral object that only needs to be good enough to function until its next iteration. As a result, they don’t feel much pressure to make it perfect. Through the deeply personal stories of people and their practices at MiddleTech, Bialski traces the ways that workers create and sustain a complex culture of good enoughness.
Download or read book Sustainability and Corporate Mechanisms in Asia written by Ernest Lim and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically examines how corporate law and governance can be and should be used to promote sustainability in Asia.
Download or read book Principles of Enterprise Law written by Ewan McGaughey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-09 with total page 815 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how the enterprises shaping our lives really work: in education, banking, energy, transport, media & big-tech.
Download or read book Disconnected written by Debbie J. Goldman and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2024-08-20 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Call center employees once blended skill and emotional intelligence to solve customer problems while the workplace itself encouraged camaraderie and job satisfaction. Ten years after telecom industry deregulation, management had isolated the largely female workforce in cubicles, imposed quotas to sell products, and installed surveillance systems that tracked every call and keystroke. Debbie J. Goldman explores how call center employees and their union fought for good, humane jobs in the face of degraded working conditions and lowered wages. As the workforce coalesced to resist the changes, it demanded the Communications Workers of America (CWA) fight for safe and secure good-paying jobs. But trends in technology, capitalism, and corporate governance--combined with the decline of unions--narrowed the negotiating options for workers. Goldman describes how the actions of workers, management, and policymakers shaped the social impact of the new digital technologies and gave new form to the telecommunications industry in a time of momentous change. Perceptive and nuanced, Disconnected tells an overlooked story of service workers in a time of change.
Download or read book Handbook on the Business of Sustainability written by Yousafzai, Shumaila and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-11 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ground-breaking Handbook uniquely focuses on the business of sustainability, offering a fresh insight and practical solutions to the challenges that businesses face in making human activity sustainable. It is organized into four distinctive themes that cut across levels of analysis and illustrate a rich set of solution contexts that will guide future research.
Download or read book Workers Collectivism and the Law written by Laura Carlson and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-28 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Workers, Collectivism and the Law offers a captivating historical account of worker democracy, from its beginnings in European guild systems to present-day labor unions, across the national legal systems of Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Analysing these legal systems in light of a Habermasian concept of participatory democracy, Laura Carlson identifies ways to strengthen individual employee voice in claims against employers.
Download or read book Varieties of Capitalism in History Transition and Emergence written by Martha Prevezer and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economics tends to teach that developed countries have good institutions while developing countries do not, and that this is the factor that constrains the latter's growth. However, the picture is far messier than this explanation suggests. Building on the varieties of capitalism framework, this book brings together the tools of institutional economics with historical analyses of institutional evolution of different kinds of property rights and legal systems, protected by different kinds of state, giving rise to distinct corporate governance structures. It constructs institutional development histories across leading liberal capitalisms in Britain and the United States, compared with continental capitalisms in France and Germany, and contemporary transitional capitalisms in China and Tanzania. This volume is innovative in combining both historical and economic insights, and in combining developed country with developing country institutional emergence, dispelling the prevailing sense of complacency about the inevitability of the path of institutional development for the developed areas of the world and the paths that developing countries are likely to follow. This volume will be of great importance to those who study international economics, development economics and international business.
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Labor in Competition Law written by Sanjukta Paul and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-26 with total page 943 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As scholars and policymakers around the world seek a systematic approach to the question of 'gig work,' one of its regulatory dimensions – the intersection of labor and competition law – points toward a deeper reconceptualization of the conventional legal and economic categories typically brought to bear upon it. A comparative approach to the question of gig work further reveals the variety and contingency of background assumptions that are often overlooked in the context of domestic policy debates. By combining a detailed comparative doctrinal survey of the regulation of non-employee workers in domestic competition law systems with a set of essays reframing the underlying questions raised – in terms of international legal frameworks, freedom of association norms, alternative approaches to law and economics, and more – The Cambridge Handbook of Labor in Competition Law moves the debates over the fissured workplace and the labor – competition law intersection forward in novel ways.
