IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cbr/cbrwps/wp511.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fiduciary - Asymmetrical Power, Asymmetrical Care

Author

Listed:
  • Helen Mussell

Abstract

The legal concept of fiduciary plays a fundamental role in all financial and business organisations. It acts as a moral safeguard of the relationship between trustee and beneficiary, ensuring that the beneficiaries’ best interests are met. It is often referred to as a duty of care. Originally formulated within familial law to protect property put into Trust, beneficiaries were women and children, allocated passive and subordinated roles. This paper investigates two aspects of the asymmetrical power relations central to the fiduciary. Firstly it reveals the gendered presuppositions regarding male and female agential capabilities on which the fiduciary is premised, drawing out the origins of the authority differential in the trustee-beneficiary relationship. Secondly, the paper engages with the ethical nature of the fiduciary relationship, arguing that Care Ethics offers a robust framework for explicating the history of the relationship, alongside delivering a morally-enhanced and future-fit fiduciary free of damaging gendered stereotypes.

Suggested Citation

  • Helen Mussell, 2019. "Fiduciary - Asymmetrical Power, Asymmetrical Care," Working Papers wp511, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    • Handle: RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp511
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/cbrwp511/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vinca Bigo, 2010. "The care paradox: devaluing and idealising care, the mother, and mother nature," International Journal of Green Economics, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 4(2), pages 117-133.
    2. Benjamin J. Richardson, 2011. "From fiduciary duties to fiduciary relationships for socially responsible investing: responding to the will of beneficiaries," Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 1(1), pages 5-19, February.
    3. Helen Mussell, 2018. "Who Dares to Care? (In the World of Finance)," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(3), pages 113-135, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Helen J. Mussell, 2023. "Theorising the Fiduciary: Ontology and Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 186(2), pages 293-307, August.
    2. Helen Mussell, 2019. "Elucidating Limited Shareholder Engagement: Identifying Ethical and Epistemological Factors in the Fiduciary," Working Papers wp516, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    3. Apostolakis, George & van Dijk, Gert & Kraanen, Frido & Blomme, Robert J., 2018. "Examining socially responsible investment preferences: A discrete choice conjoint experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 83-96.
    4. Maria Carolina Rezende de Carvalho Ferreira & Vinicius Amorim Sobreiro & Herbert Kimura & Flavio Luiz de Moraes Barboza, 2016. "A systematic review of literature about finance and sustainability," Journal of Sustainable Finance & Investment, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(2), pages 112-147, April.
    5. Matthew M Haigh & Matthew A Shapiro, 2013. "Do Environmental Policy Instruments Influence Fiduciaries' Decisions?," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(4), pages 853-871, April.
    6. Fernando Muñoz, 2020. "How do the size and independence of the board of trustees affect the financial and sustainable performance of socially responsible mutual funds?," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(4), pages 1834-1850, July.
    7. Brandstetter Lisa & Lehner Othmar M., 2015. "Opening the Market for Impact Investments: The Need for Adapted Portfolio Tools," Entrepreneurship Research Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 87-107, April.
    8. Paolo Santori, 2023. "Careocracy or isocracy? A feminist alternative to the neoliberal meritocratic discourse," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-9, December.
    9. Borgers, A.C.T., 2014. "Responsible investing : New insights into performance and tastes," Other publications TiSEM 587e777f-c242-4a44-968e-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fiduciary; economic agency; care ethics; gender relations; gender politics; trustee; beneficiary; tort law; essentialism; history of finance; share-holder activism; history of economic thought; feminist economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A12 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Other Disciplines
    • B40 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - General
    • B54 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Feminist Economics
    • K1 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law
    • N2 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp511. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ruth Newman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.