Who are the owners of the firm: shareholders, employees or no one?
Virgile Chassagnon and
Xavier Hollandts ()
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Xavier Hollandts: CRCGM et IFGE - Kedge Business School - Kedge BS - Kedge Business School
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Abstract:
The issue of firm ownership is an ongoing debate. For several decades, contractarian theory has undoubtedly shaped the academic debate in both law and economics. Proponents of this approach suggest that shareholders can legitimately be considered the owners of a firm because they hold shares. This approach, though attractive, is legally incorrect. Legal scholars have noted that a corporation cannot legally belong to shareholders or other stakeholders; no one owns the firm (and a corporation). The question of firm ownership masks the following crucial issue: Who should govern the firm? In this article, after returning to the theoretical debate on firm ownership and explaining why a firm cannot be owned, we shall analyze power as the core of firm governance. This approach is a potentially relevant and accurate way to address the problems of specific human investment, collective creation and productive (consummate) cooperation in modern firms.
Keywords: firm; power; ownership; employee participation; real entity paradigm; law and economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-03-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)
Published in Journal of Institutional Economics, 2014, 10 (1)
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Journal Article: Who are the owners of the firm: shareholders, employees or no one? (2014) 
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01372370
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