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corporations: power & responsibilityopenDemocracy contributors chart the past and future for corporations.
We begin with a series of scene setting texts. In Loot, Nick Robins takes a view on the East India Company, one of the first giant multi-nationals; John Kay offers a clever, partly satirical analysis on the business of energy extraction in the developing world; while Friends of the Earth and Diane Coyle slug it out in the ideological battle over corporate regulation. A detailed timeline on the origins and development of the modern corporation follows with an intereview with John Micklethwait, US editor of The Economist, acting in the company's defence. In reply Deborah Doanne pooh-poohs his free market views: Companies could do more for society, she says, if only they were brave enough. Then our keynote roundtable between top corporate critics and supporters (featuring Martin Wolf) on subjects of Enron, global regulation and corporate responsibility in developing markets, with a prelude that introduces the speakers and their arguments. Sir Mark Moody-Stuart chairman of Anglo American, and formerly so at Shell, answers back with an agenda for change in Africa, and former top US financial regulator Bill Black draws knives on Enron and the culture that breeds corporate crime in America. A human-rights lens on corporate power as a path to a fairer world
The soft power of nations is exercised through a complex web of international
relationships and to be effective, it requires an open
approach to power domestically
Both capitalism and democracy are in crisis. How corporations are governed is at the heart of both
The triumph of neo-liberal globalisation is also the imposition of a new way of governing behaviour
"Backyard" sellers and wild birds have been blamed for the spread of the deadly virus. The real culprits are industrial poultry farms and others who profit from the global trade, says a report from Grain, an NGO that carries out research into issues around biodiversity. Read the rest of this post...
China is forging new links with Latin
America. But the impact of its "south-south strategy" is more
complex than the rhetoric of solidarity and progress suggests, reports
Ben Schiller.
As Chinese companies “go global”, NGO campaigners are increasingly concerned about Beijing’s model of international development. Read the rest of this post...
The Shanghai dialogue of the UN Global Compact Summit suggests to Simon Zadek that a fusion of globalisation and corporate responsibility is becoming essential to China’s transformation. Read the rest of this post...
“Control fraud” is what happens when the person who controls a large company is a criminal. Enron was only the most conspicuous example of a pervasive phenomenon in corporate behaviour, says this white-collar criminologist. The participants in openDemocracy’s roundtable on corporate power and responsibility miss the point: as long as regulators fail to ask the right questions, we are condemned to suffer further crimes. Read the rest of this post...
What does a real-life captain of industry have to say about corporate power and responsibility? Here, the Chairman of Anglo-American (and former Chairman of Royal Dutch/Shell) responds to openDemocracy‘s roundtable, focussing on the role of multinational corporations in Africa. He says that unless business, civil society and government team up to create sound systems of governance in developing societies, wealth will tear them apart. Read the rest of this post...
Participants in openDemocracy’s roundtable on corporate power and responsibility introduce themselves. Read the rest of this post...
What are the boundaries of corporate power and responsibility in the 21st century? In this key note roundtable discussion, leading activists, analysts and practitioners talk to Iain Ferguson and Caspar Henderson of openDemocracy. Read the rest of this post...
Ahead of the publication of openDemocracy’s keynote roundtable on Corporate Power & Responsibility, Deborah Doane reflects on the debate so far and concludes that our relationship with modern capitalism and big companies is like a rocky marriage. It needs constant attention and compromise, but can ultimately be beneficial if only we are ready to take responsibility for our own actions. Read the rest of this post...
In the age of globalisation, companies are often associated with scandal (Enron), litigation (Microsoft), or overweening power (Wal-Mart). But in the wider historical perspective, the institution is both socially more transforming and politically less powerful than it often appears. Read the rest of this post...
What are the key events in the rise of modern corporations? Why do these institutions matter? Are they more powerful now than before, better behaved or worse? openDemocracy's corporate timeline explores the long, complex and controversial history of this engine of contemporary capitalism. Read the rest of this post...
‘Get your facts right’ says Diane Coyle to Friends of the Earth (FoE) – business is far from evil or unduly powerful. The bad behaviour of a few companies will be solved by better corporate governance rules. In the fifth of our introductory texts to the debate Corporations: Power and Responsibility, Diane Coyle argues that FoE’s push for heavy regulation on a sector already subject to rising tax burdens would be a spanner in the engine of global growth and prosperity. Read the rest of this post...
Business is bigger and ‘badder’ than ever, say two Friends of the Earth (FoE) campaigners, in the opening round of our debate, Corporations: Power and Responsibility. Corporations, FoE argues, evade the flimsy systems of regulation currently in place. The only way to stop them from being destructive is to create a legally binding set of global rules that will force them to care about the consequences of their actions. (Economist Diane Coyle responds next week) Read the rest of this post...
When Giovanni Agnelli died this year he was still Honorary Chairman of the Fiat group. His extraordinary influence marked the growth of post-war Italy, and is essential to understanding the country now. But is his life achievement a model for future businessmen or a glorious memory of an unviable past? Read the rest of this post...
Are transparency and honesty, rather than the fashionable notion of corporate social responsibility, the best ways to business success? Sir Luke Very-Moody, Chairman of the Swell Oil Company thinks so. In the draft of a speech exclusively leaked to John Kay, Sir Luke celebrates the first gush of oil production in the African country of Couldbericha by reasserting the need for business to follow its own values and leave moral standards to be written by the people it serves. Read the rest of this post...
Concerns about corporate power and responsibility are as old as the corporation itself. In this account of the East India Company, the world’s first transnational corporation, Nick Robins argues that an unholy alliance between British government, military and commerce held India in slavery, reversed the flow of trade and cultural influence forever between the East and West and then sunk almost without trace under the weight of colonial guilt. Read the rest of this post...
Corporate America is mired in scandal, and chief executive officers (CEOs) are in the line of fire. But if the problem lies deeper than just a few rotten apples, so the solution requires a new business model that creates an ethical foundation for CEO behaviour. Behind the headlines, it’s already happening. Read the rest of this post...
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