Company Law and Sustainability: Legal Barriers and Opportunities PDF
Preview Company Law and Sustainability: Legal Barriers and Opportunities
COMPANY LAW AND SUSTAINABILITY This investigation of the barriers to and opportunities for promot- ing environmental sustainability in company law provides an in- depth comparative analysis of company law regimes across the world. The social norm of shareholder primacy is the greatest barrier to progress, and this recognition also helps explain why voluntary action by companies and investors alone is insufficient. By deconstruct- ing the myth that shareholder primacy has a legal basis and chal- lenging the economic postulates on which the mainstream corporate governance debate is based, Company Law and Sustainability reveals the surprisingly large unexplored potential in current company law regimes for companies to reorient themselves towards sustainability. It also suggests possible methods of reforming the existing legal infra- structure for companies and makes an important contribution to the widerdebateonhowtoachievesustainability. beate sja˚fjellheadstheinternationalnetworkofscholarsintheSus- tainable Companies Project, on which much of the ground-breaking research in this book is based. Professor Sja˚fjell is also the head of the University of Oslo’s research group, Companies, Markets, Society and theEnvironment(jus.uio.no/companies),aswellasofitsEuropeanLaw Network. benjamin j. richardson is Professor of Environmental Law at the FacultyofLawandInstituteforMarineandAntarcticStudies,University ofTasmania,Australia.Histeachingandscholarshipcoverclimatechange law,sociallyresponsibleinvestment,corporatesocialresponsibility,and Aboriginallegalissues. COMPANY LAW AND SUSTAINABILITY Legal Barriers and Opportunities Editedby BEATE SJA˚ FJELL BENJAMIN J. RICHARDSON UniversityPrintingHouse,CambridgeCB28BS,UnitedKingdom CambridgeUniversityPressispartoftheUniversityofCambridge. ItfurtherstheUniversity’smissionbydisseminatingknowledgeinthepursuitof education,learningandresearchatthehighestinternationallevelsofexcellence. www.cambridge.org Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9781107043275 (cid:2)C CambridgeUniversityPress2015 Thispublicationisincopyright.Subjecttostatutoryexception andtotheprovisionsofrelevantcollectivelicensingagreements, noreproductionofanypartmaytakeplacewithoutthewritten permissionofCambridgeUniversityPress. Firstpublished2015 AcataloguerecordforthispublicationisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationdata Companylawandsustainability:legalbarriersandopportunities/editedby BeateSja˚fjell,BenjaminJ.Richardson. pages cm Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN978-1-107-04327-5(hardback) 1.Corporategovernance–Lawandlegislation. 2.Sustainabledevelopment–Law andlegislation. 3.Corporationlaw. I.Sja˚fjell,Beate,editor. II.Richardson, BenjaminJ.,editor. K1315.C65 2015 346(cid:3).066–dc23 2015005503 ISBN978-1-107-04327-5Hardback CambridgeUniversityPresshasnoresponsibilityforthepersistenceoraccuracyof URLsforexternalorthird-partyinternetwebsitesreferredtointhispublication, anddoesnotguaranteethatanycontentonsuchwebsitesis,orwillremain, accurateorappropriate. Inmemoryofmydeeplybeloveddaughter, Aleksandra(1997–2014) BeateSja˚fjell CONTENTS Listofcontributors page ix Foreword xii Preface xv 1 Capitalism,thesustainabilitycrisis,andthelimitations ofcurrentbusinessgovernance 1 benjamin j. richardson and beate sja˚fjell 2 Corporatesocialresponsibilityandenvironmental sustainability 35 david millon 3 Shareholderprimacy:themainbarriertosustainable companies 79 beate sja˚fjell, andrew johnston, linn anker-sørensen, and david millon 4 Theroleofboarddirectorsinpromotingenvironmental sustainability 148 blanaid clarke 5 Accounting,auditing,andreporting:supportingor obstructingthesustainablecompaniesobjective? 175 charlotte villiers and jukka ma¨ho¨nen 6 Financialmarketsandsociallyresponsibleinvesting 226 benjamin j. richardson 7 Limitstocorporatereformandalternativelegal structures 274 carol liao vii viii contents 8 Thefutureofcompanylawandsustainability 312 beate sja˚fjell and benjamin j. richardson Index 341
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