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Dr David Gindis (Warwick University) - From the Co-Production to the Joint Production of the Corporate Form

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Venue: Online

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We are pleased to announce the 1st Seminar Series on "Governance, Institutions, and Sustainability” jointly hosted by the Centre for Political Economy and Institutional Studies and by the Birkbeck Responsible Business Centre, within the Birkbeck Business School.   

In our rapidly evolving world, the intricate web connecting governance, institutions, and sustainability has become increasingly prominent. We invite scholars, researchers, and practitioners to enhance this very important debate and to join us in exploring the profound intertwining of these critical elements at our upcoming seminar series.

 

Abstract 

It is now increasingly recognized that firms embody a mix of private and public ordering: to set up and operate firms, both contracts (bringing together those whose collective action generates joint value) and state law (which supplies a range of legal forms and enforcement technologies) are needed. What is less appreciated is that legal forms are themselves both public and private. We rely on the Bloomington School concept of co-production alongside the older concept of joint production to frame this issue. We argue that incorporation is a process of co-production, in the sense that the users’ input is needed for the corporate form to be produced, but that to understand how the corporate form helps coordinate collective action after this initial stage it is useful to think of it as both a legal and epistemic focal point and an input into the firm’s operations that is jointly produced with those operations. We connect the discussion with the emerging literature on knowledge commons and cognitive institutions, before drawing some more general conclusions about the bundling of legal and non-legal features of the key institutions of capitalism.

 

Speaker: 

Dr David Gindis (Warwick University)

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