Shareholder Primacy and the Distribution of Wealth

Abstract

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Global inequality chains: integrating mechanisms of value distribution into analyses of global production

“…The ability to set out barriers to entry and thereby reproduce quasi-monopolistic or quasi-monopsonistic practices in a node is a fundamental piece in the puzzle of 'business success' (Cox et al 2001; see also Anderson 2014). Class monopoly rent and other forms of surplus appropriation such as finance capital are coercively realized and justified as an entitlement through contractual arrangements (Hale 1923), intellectual property (Perelman 2003;Pirie 2009), and financialized corporate governance based on the doctrine of 'shareholder value' (Froud et al 2006;Ireland 2005). For example, fast moving consumer goods corporations such as Heinz and Procter & Gamble have since the 1990s focused on 'core categories', selling off lower performing brands/product ranges and using the proceeds to acquire competing core category brands to control the supermarket shelf in that category and maximize the capture of brand rents (Campling 2012;Gibbon and Ponte 2005).…”

Politics of the Corporation

“…I then showed how from the 1970s a neoclassical theory of organizational representation emerged that allowed the corporate form and its effects to remain ‘under the radar’. This helped to justify the corporate form as a ‘primary vehicle of capitalism’ (Butler, , p. 99), which is ‘… created to serve the interests of a small minority …’ (Litowitz, , p. 422), and its role in the accumulation of social wealth (Duménil and Lévy, ; Froud, Johal and Williams, ; Ireland, ; Lazonick and O'Sullivan, ) and in the concentration of economic, political and legal power (Peck, ; Plehwe, ; Van Horn, ; Van Horn and Mirowski, ).…”

Specters, Inc.: The Elusive Basis of the Corporation

“…Some have argued that the mutually exclusive nature of the concepts underlying the theory of incorporation has made it practically impossible to formulate coherent and explicit policy, since any ruling on the nature of the separate legal entity would also be a de facto ruling about economic agents (Mayer ). Others have argued that the continuing calls for “pragmatism” and “convenience” help to retain legal and economic scholars in a position where their assumptions become the unavoidable reference points for understanding the nature of the corporation, the logic of production relations, and the social division of wealth (Ireland ). Whether the reasons behind it are practical or ideological in nature, the search for justification, rather than falsification (Zey , p. 53) of this concept in its contemporary state as an inconsistent fiction, a “constructed reference point” (Bratton , p. 428) or a purely “metaphysical” idea, makes it very plausible that incoherence has its own functions.…”