Williams Cynthia A., Zumbansen Peer. The Embedded Firm: Corporate Governance, Labor, and Finance Capitalism

Cambridge University Press, 2011. — 498 p.The globalization of capital markets since the 1980s has been accompanied by a vigorous debate over the convergence of corporate governance standards around the world towards the shareholder model. But even before the financial and economic crisis of 2008/2009, the dominance of the shareholder model was challenged with regard to persisting divergences and national differences in corporate law, labor law and industrial relations. The present collection explores this debate at an important crossroads, echoing Karl Polanyi’s famous observation in 1944 of the disembeddedness of the market from society. Drawing on pertinent insights from scholars, practitioners and regulators in corporate and labor law, securities regulation as well as economic sociology and management theory, the contributions shed important light on the empirical effects on the economy of the shift to shareholder primacy, in light of a comprehensive reconsideration of the global context, policy goals and regulatory forms which characterize market governance today.
Cynthia A. Williams is Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. From 2007–2009, she held the inaugural Osler Chair in Business Law at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto. Professor Williams is a founder and director of the Network for Sustainable Financial Markets, a global collaboration between academics and market participants.
Peer Zumbansen holds the Canada Research Chair in Transnational Economic Governance and Legal Theory at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto. Professor Zumbansen is the founder and Director of the Critical Research Laboratory in Law & Society and co-founder and Co-editor-in-chief of the CLPE Research Paper Series (with John Cioffi).Historical trajectories of business and regulation
New interests, new shareholder constellations, new landscapes
Labor’s evolution in the new economy
The transnational embedded firm and the financial crisis