Rethinking the Firm: Theories of the Business Enterprise

What is a business corporation and where do they come from? This book provides an account of the nature of the business enterprise (including the corporation) as a social institution that has become as important as political states and families in modern society.

Written in jargon-free language, the book provides a guide to general readers who are interested to know how business enterprises arose historically, how they are legally regulated, what economic dynamics explain the changing size and internal organization of modern enterprises, and how the political dimension is important.

Essential reading for managers and policy makers, as well as academics and students in many fields, this book provides the first contemporary interdisciplinary theory of business enterprises. It provides a foundation for further thinking about the social purpose of a business enterprise, which includes not only the primary economic objective of wealth creation but also a larger role in the basic structure of modern society. The book will also inform those engaged in debates about how business enterprises should be regulated and toward what ends.

Eric W. Orts is the Guardsmark Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a professor in the Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department with a joint appointment in the Management Department. His primary research and teaching interests are corporate governance, professional ethics, and environmental management. In addition to teaching at Wharton, Orts has taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and visited at the UCLA School of Law, University of Michigan Law School, Tsinghua University, Sydney Law School, and NYU School of Law. He has also been visiting Fulbright professor in the law department of the University of Leuven, the Eugene P. Beard Faculty Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Ethics and the Professions, and a faculty fellow in the Center for Business and Government at the Kennedy School at Harvard.