Contemporary Theories in Corporate Law and Corporate Governance - Daughters of Themis Workshop 2021

The theme of the sixth international workshop of Daughters of Themis: International Network of Female Business Scholars, is the highly topical theme of ‘Contemporary Theories in Corporate Law and Corporate Governance’. The aim of the annual workshop is to provide a forum for open, intimate and inspiring discussions with workshop participants selected based on a highly competitive call for papers.

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Workshop theme

The global corporate landscape has changed in the wake of financial crises, geopolitical risks, and environmental emergencies that have defined the start of the 21st century. Public calls for greater corporate accountability across a wide range of powerful stakeholders – world leaders, institutional investors, bankers, and even our children – emphasise the need for new and sustaining relationships to secure the social foundation for humanity within planetary boundaries. Traditional corporate law and corporate governance theories underlying scholarship, policy, and industry may have lost their significance.

Dominant theories of the modern corporation underpinning our legal and regulatory frameworks have directly and indirectly influenced how various corporate interests are prioritized and protected. Corporate behaviour to date has been informed by deeply entrenched norms in corporate law and corporate governance. These include social norms contrary to corporate law, notably that the purpose of the corporation is to maximise returns to investors, that the corporation is to be governed in pursuit of that sole objective, and that shareholders are the owners of the corporation. Boards are under increasing pressure to balance conflicting expectations.

These dominant theories form the basis of some of the most contentious historical debates in corporate legal theory, and inform much of the teachings in law and business schools. This underscores the need for a critical analysis of these still pervasive theories, and gives rise to the questions of whether and to what extent they are useful for understanding the dynamic fields of corporate law and corporate governance today, and which alternative or new theories we should consider.

Preparation for the workshop

Workshop spaces for the physical workshop are limited to 14 participants so that each participant can benefit from extended discussion of her work. The selection of participants is competitive, based on the quality and thematic fit of the submitted abstract with the workshop theme. The workshop sessions are shaped to ensure interactive discussion, with two commentators per paper. Each participant will accordingly be asked to prepare comments for two other papers.

Timely submission of working papers is a condition for workshop participation. Short working papers of a maximum of 2,500 words including footnotes will be due by 25 May 2021. The word limit for the short working papers is chosen to enable all workshop participants to read all papers in preparation for the workshop, and to give space for developing the themes of the individual papers after the workshop, based on the comments and discussion. The limit for the full-length papers will be 8,000 words including footnotes.

A peer-reviewed joint publication of selected workshop papers is envisaged, after follow-up workshops in the autumn of 2021. We will therefore only accept original research, which is not submitted for publication elsewhere, and we request that the workshop participants commit to this publication process within a reasonable time line, to be agreed upon at the workshop.

Practical details about the workshop

The workshop has been moved from 2020 to 2021 due to Covid19, and has due to the ongoing pandemic been changed from a physical to a virtual mini-workshop. We aim to follow up with a physical workshop as soon as possible.

The virtual mini-workshop will be held through Zoom, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 1-3 June, 5-8 pm CEST to accommodate the participants’ time zones. The structure of the workshop discussions mirror those at the physical workshop, with less time for each paper to limit Zoom fatigue.

Programme

Please see the final programme for the workshop (.pdf).

Organising committee for the 2021 workshop

Professor Beate Sjåfjell, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo

Associate Professor Carol Liao, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia

 

 

Published Jan. 17, 2020 11:23 AM - Last modified Aug. 20, 2022 12:07 AM