The Corporate Paradox
Economic Realities of the Corporate Form of Organization
Authors: Cortenraad, Wouter H.F.M.
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- About this book
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The `corporation' is by far the most successful legal concept of organization among large business firms. Yet there are numerous examples of firms operated in corporate form that were troubled either by internal problems arising from divergences of interests between the firm's various constituents (notably, managers and investors), or by conflicts with other members of society (including both victims of accidents or environmental pollution caused by the firm and unpaid creditors in the event of business failure). It is this paradox between the corporation's prima facie success and its apparent ambiguity in other respects that is examined in this book.
Using modern economic theory concerning the functioning of markets and organizations, The Corporate Paradox examines how the concept of the corporation relates to the economic entity it organizes and in effect, how it may affect the use that firms make of society's valuable but scarce resources. To this end, both the economic rationales underlying the corporate form of organization and its effects on organizational and individual behavior are reviewed, with special emphasis on the separation between `ownership' and `control' and the principle of limited liability of shareholders, two features which are typical of the corporate concept. Finally, this book surveys, from a predominantly economic perspective, legal remedies that United States and Dutch law have developed in response to certain inefficiencies to which these features may give rise. - About the authors
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H.F.M. Cortenraad (1966), is a member of the bar of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is currently a practicing lawyer in the Amsterdam offices of Loeff Claeys Verbeke (Nederland), where he specializes in corporate law and commercial litigation. Cortenraad graduated from the law schools of the Universities of Maastricht, The Netherlands, and Toronto, Canada. He is a former legal counsel of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group and a former John M. Olin Visiting Research Fellow in Law and Economics at Harvard Law School, USA.
- Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Introduction
Pages 1-11
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On Buttermilk and Islands of Conscious Power
Pages 15-40
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The Corporate Vehicle — A View from Organization Theory
Pages 41-86
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A Paradox Named Limited Liability
Pages 87-131
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The Problem of Internal Costs
Pages 135-177
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- The Corporate Paradox
- Book Subtitle
- Economic Realities of the Corporate Form of Organization
- Authors
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- Wouter H.F.M. Cortenraad
- Copyright
- 2000
- Publisher
- Springer US
- Copyright Holder
- Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
- eBook ISBN
- 978-1-4615-4619-1
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-1-4615-4619-1
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-0-7923-8695-7
- Softcover ISBN
- 978-1-4613-7088-8
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- XI, 402
- Topics
