David Chan Smith

My new article explores how moral ideas during the 1840s and 1850s reshaped business organization in England by driving the campaign to liberalize company law.  Click here to read the article.

Talk: Christian Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and the Origins of Howard Bowen’s Social Responsibilities of the Businessman

Howard Bowen’s Social Responsibilities of the Businessman (1953) is a classic text in American corporate social responsibility. Yet little is known about its origins. This paper at the World Business Conference in Japan (July 2021) uses archival research to reveal the religious underpinnings of the book and its emergence from a collaborative and longstanding project of the National Council of Churches.

Talk: Earthly Cities: Early Common Law Corporate Ideas and the Case of Sutton's Hospital

This paper at the University of Seattle Law School (August 2021) will explore one of the most important common law cases in corporate law, Sutton's Hospital (1612), in which the corporation was described as soulless, and "invisible, immortal, & resteth only in intendment and consideration of the Law."