Reconstructing the Corporation From Shareholder Primacy to Shared Governance

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.

Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. Preference aggregation in political institutions; 3. Preference aggregation in corporations; 4. The corporation as contract; 5. Shareholder homogeneity; 6. The argument from the residual; 7. The argument from Arrow's theorem; 8. The shareholder franchise and board primacy; 9. A firm-based approach to corporate voting rights; 10. Democratic participation and shared governance; 11. The German codetermination experience; 12. Conclusion; Notes; Index.

Grant M. Hayden is Professor of Law at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law. He writes and teaches in the areas of voting rights, labor law, and corporate governance. He is also the author of American Law: An Introduction, 3rd edition (with Lawrence M. Friedman, 2017).
Matthew Bodie is Callis Family Professor at Saint Louis University School of Law and Co-Director of the William C. Wefel Center for Employment Law. He served as a reporter for the Restatement of Employment Law (American Law Institute, 2015) and chair of the business associations section of the Association of American Law Schools.