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Tony Lawson's Theory of the Corporation: Towards a Social Ontology of Law

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  • Simon Deakin

Abstract

In his account of the corporation as a 'community', Tony Lawson advances a materialist theory of social reality to argue for the existence of emergent social structures based on collective practices and behaviours, distinguishing his position from John Searle's theory of social reality as consisting of declarative speech acts. Lawson's and Searle's accounts are examined for what they imply about the relationship between social structures and legal concepts. It is argued that legal concepts are themselves a feature of social reality and that a consequence of the law's recognition of the 'reality' of the corporation is to open up the activities of business firm to a distinct form of normative ordering.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon Deakin, 2017. "Tony Lawson's Theory of the Corporation: Towards a Social Ontology of Law," Working Papers wp491, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
    • Handle: RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp491
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    File URL: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/cbrwp491/
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Tony Lawson, 2015. "Comparing Conceptions of Social Ontology: Emergent Social Entities and/or Institutional Facts?," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1514, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
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    8. Bratton William W., 2011. "Reuven Avi-Yonah's "Citizens United and the Corporate Form": Still Unuseful," Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, De Gruyter, vol. 1(3), pages 1-10, December.
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    Cited by:

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    3. Imko Meyenburg, 2022. "A possibilist justification of the ontology of counterfactuals and forecasted states of economies in economic modelling," Working Papers hal-03751205, HAL.
    4. Ann E. Davis, 2018. "The New Triffin Dilemma," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 50(4), pages 691-698, December.
    5. Blanche Segrestin & Armand Hatchuel & Kevin Levillain, 2021. "When the Law Distinguishes Between the Enterprise and the Corporation: The Case of the New French Law on Corporate Purpose," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 171(1), pages 1-13, June.
    6. Blanche Segrestin & Armand Hatchuel & Kevin Levillain, 2020. "When the law distinguishes between the enterprise and the corporation: the case of the new French law on corporate purpose," Post-Print hal-02441287, HAL.
    7. Blanche Segrestin & Armand Hatchuel & Kevin Levillain, 2021. "When the Law Distinguishes Between the Enterprise and the Corporation: The Case of the New French Law on Corporate Purpose," Post-Print hal-02465609, HAL.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    social ontology; the corporation; legal evolution;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B52 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Historical; Institutional; Evolutionary; Modern Monetary Theory;
    • K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Business and Securities Law

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