Showing papers on "Corporate group published in 1989"

The New Economic Theory of the Firm: Critical Perspectives from History

Abstract: Theories of the firm inform and undergird corporate law,' but they only intermittently appear as principal points in corporate law discourse. They stayed in the background during the half century ending in 1980, while a conception of the firm as a management power structure prevailed unchallenged in legal theory.2 The situation changed around 1980, when a new theory of the firm3 appeared, imported from economics. This "new economic theory of the firm" asserted a contractual conception. The firm, said its leading text, is a legal fiction that serves as a nexus for a set of contractual relationships among individual factors of production.4 According to the theory, corporate relationships and structures could be explained in terms of contracting parties and transaction costs. Law and economics writers restated corporate law in the new theory's terms5 and successfully reoriented legal discourse on corporations.6 The new theory already has sunk into the

Evolution of Japan’s Corporate and Industrial Networks

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamic change of Japan’s industrial organization within a framework of the evolutionary process from zaibatsu to business groups and further to the recent network industrial organization.1 However, the focus of this research is not on a historical analysis. Rather, by making a comparative analysis of the three corporate networks we attempt to bring into relief the basic character of the network industrial organization now appearing in Japan.

Toward a New/Old Theory of Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract: This article discusses how the law should treat the purpose of corporations It argues that they should exist not just to maximize profit but to also benefit the larger philanthropic and educational needs of society Toward that end, corporations should be more generous with those expenditures and undertake certain activity in their line of business that promotes them, even if they are profitable as other work