What is Happening to Corporations and What of Their Future?

The chapter analyzes the mergent ways companies are becoming overtly political actors and pursues the consequences of this for the future of the corporation. The discussion begins by analyzing the relationships between owners and shareholders in the context of the legal constitution of corporations. The chapter moves on to take up ‘the debate’ about the divorce of ownership from control in the light of this thorough examination of the legal status of the corporation, in so doing revisiting the terms of that debate in the 1930s and 1940s that arose in the light of the Berle and Means’ book, The Modern Corporation and Private Property(1932). Subsequent to this it moves on to think about the possible future of the corporation and the potential for the reform of corporate governance in this light of current circumstances and trends in a post-crisis world.