Looking at corporations up close

How should we look at the role of corporations in society: As an efficient model for financing, making, and selling widgets? As a Leviathan wielding enough power to cripple entire economies? As a “a state within a state” that exerts more political/social/economic influence on our daily lives than even governments?

And an odd state it is, too, as a system with an overarching duty to be profitable for shareholders and – as many have argued – an equal duty to be socially responsible. What do we make of these entities in an age when we increasingly do not eat, drink, work, play, commute or communicate outside their sphere of influence? How is it that a name alone can strike an emotionally evocative chord (think: Enron, WalMart, Starbucks, Volvo)? Can we blame corporations for creating greedy bigwigs and bank bailouts?

“It’s tempting to blame or demonize the ‘big bad corporations’ for the failures of capitalism,” says Professor Sarah Bradley of the Schulich School of Law. “And we should certainly look at the problems created with this system, but we shouldn’t overlook the very important role that corporations do play in society.”

In the next free public lecture in Dal’s Mini Law School series, ‘The Role of Corporations in Society’, Professor Bradley will examine the role of big business in our society from a number of different perspectives, including:

• the evil corporation of popular culture – psychopathic and corrupt;
• the corporation as a necessary agent of economic growth – a unique tool for advancing human prosperity;
• the corporation as scapegoat for human greed and capitalist market failures; and
• the corporation as a legal relationship among people – who directs the behaviour of corporations and what are their motivations and responsibilities?

Join Professor Bradley Thursday evening for this free public event. Light refreshments will be served.

 Mini Law School, hosted by the Schulich School of Law
, takes place Thursday, March 17, 6 to 7:30 p.m. in 
Room 105 of the Weldon Law Building.