Firm Commitment: Why the corporation is failing us and how to restore trust in it - Hardcover

Mayer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199669937 ISBN 13: 9780199669936

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2013

Synopsis

The corporation is one of the most important and remarkable institutions in the world. It affects all our lives continuously. It feeds, entertains, houses and, employs us. It generates vast amounts of revenue for those who own it and it invests a substantial proportion of the wealth that we possess. But the corporation is also the cause of immense problems and suffering, a source of poverty and pollution, and its failures are increasing. How is the corporation failing us? Why is it happening? What should we do to restore trust in it? While governments are subject to repeated questioning and scrutiny, the corporation receives relatively little attention.

Firm Commitment provides a lucid and insightful account of the role of the corporation in modern society and explains why its problems are growing. It gives a fresh perspective on the crises in financial markets, developing countries, and the environment. Based on decades of analysis and research, it describes a new approach to thinking about the firm which not only stops it destroying us but turns it into the means of protecting our environment, addressing social problems, and creating new sources of entrepreneurship and innovation. It sets out an agenda for converting the corporation into a twenty-first century organization that we will value and trust. It takes you on a journey that starts in the Galapagos, ends in Ancient Egypt, and in the process brings you to a new level of appreciation of the economic world we inhabit.

About this title

Review

A constructive critique of the commercial corporation and ultimately an ambiguous agenda for change. Worthy of wide readership because it is also a carefully weighed historical reflection, and thus unlike the majority of books published in this genre. (Oxford Today Vol. 25 No. 2)

A provocative book ... Mayer's critique of the modern corporation will resonate with millions who sense that something serious has gone amiss. (Bloomberg News)

There is no shortage of reflections on the market failure in the West. [But this is] not just another fashionable tome on the topic. Rather, it is a solemn contemplation of the roots of corporations' defects. You can sense the seriousness of his thoughts in every line. (China Daily)

A smart new book. (The Atlantic)

An important book. It provides an impressive explanation of the state of things and a blueprint for converting the corporation into a 21st century organisation that could perhaps be trusted to promote the interests of economies and societies everywhere. (New Zealand Management)

Mayer makes his case clearly and passionately. (Financial Times Summer Books Guide)

An outspoken book ... This is not a theoretical debate but one of urgent importance for economies around the world. (GRC-Daily (Governance, Risk Management and Compliance))

The combination of theory and its commercial application comes through in this thoughtful study of the corporation. The analysis is quality. (Neil Hedges, Management Today)

Blunt ... thoughtful ... thought-provoking. (Eric Krell, Business Finance Magazine)

Lays out a plan for a radical rethink of the purpose of the corporation. (CSRwire.com)

About the Author

Colin Mayer is former Dean of the Said Business School at the University of Oxford. He is an Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and of St Anne's College, Oxford. He is an Ordinary Member of the Competition Appeal Tribunal and a Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). He has served on the editorial boards of several leading academic journals and assisted in establishing the prestigious networks of economics, law and finance academics in Europe at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and ECGI. He was a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University, a Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England, and the first Leo Goldschmidt Visiting Professor of Corporate Governance at the Solvay Business School, Université de Bruxelles. He was a director of Oxera between 1986 and 2010 and was instrumental in building the firm into what is now one of the largest independent economics consultancies in the UK.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0199669937
• ISBN 13: 9780199669936
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320