Corporate Personhood and Fiduciary Duties as Critical Constructs in Developing Stakeholder Management Theory and Corporate Purpose

This article considers the complex process of economic value creation in joint production in which a corporation is viewed as more than a nexus of contracts for four reasons related to the interdependent functions of the corporate personhood concept of the corporation as a separate legal entity. Corporate personhood facilitates stewardship and stakeholder management, which can encourage firm-specific investments, reduce shirking, and attenuate rent seeking to provide economic value. The corporate personhood approach illuminates multidimensional constructs for the governance of a corporation at the board level to embody fiduciary duties and corporate purpose, which is much richer than the nexus of contract view.

History: This paper has been accepted for the Strategy Science Special Issue on Corporate Purpose.