Corporate purposes and the law

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• Author: Anna Grandori
• Date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12629

RESEARCH DIALOGUE

Corporate purposes and the law

Anna Grandori

Department of Management and Technology, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy

Correspondence

Anna Grandori, Department of Management and Technology, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy.

Email: anna.grandori@unibocconi.it

The European Management Review is pleased to host

this Dialogue on an important theme, gaining

increasing attention in the academic debate on both

sides of the Atlantic, as well as in the policy initiatives

of European institutions. The theme is the role of

“purposes”in driving the conduct of enterprises. This

Dialogue develops and articulates the argument that a

debate on purposes not considering the role of law is

destined to remain weak in consequences and imprecise

in conceptualization.

The Dialogue comprises three pieces centered, in

different ways, on that role. The pieces are developments

of some of the presentations offered by the authors at a

EURAM 2023 Symposium, of which EMR invited

submission, for potential transformation in short articles

to compose a Dialogue.

The contribution by Colin Mayer offers a set of broad

interdisciplinary reflections on corporate purposes, in

the context of contemporary challenges, in relation to

economic theory and practice, to the evolving corporate

law, and to performance and policy implications.

Livia Ventura mobilizes her juridical background for

offering a much needed map for orienting in the

complicated territory of emerging legal provisions;

especially with reference to Europe, but including

many comparative law observations with respect to the

United Kingdom and the United States.

The analysis by Blanche Segrestin and Kevin

Levillain reflects and draw general lessons and implica-

tions from an important European experience: the

French reform instituting the form of société à mission,

that the author themselves contributed in promoting.

Those implications include how those developments in

the law can suggest broadening and renewing the concep-

tualization of the role of management.

Thanking the authors for having considered EMR as

a possible outlet, we hope the Dialogue can contribute

useful inputs for strengthening the discussion on purposes

in management, as well as for illuminating public policy

regulation, in Europe and elsewhere.

Anna Grandori

Editor-in-Chief, European Management Review

ORCID

Anna Grandori https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0708-393X

How to cite this article: Grandori, A. (2023)

Corporate purposes and the law. European

Management Review, 20(4), 718. https://doi.org/10.

1111/emre.12629

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12629

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any

medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2023 The Author. European Management Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Academy of Management (EURAM).

718 European Management Review. 2023;20:718.

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