Capitalism's Moral Economy
How have people historically sought to make economic markets fairer?
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From business and its social responsibilities to how moral ideas change business organization, my research probes the moral economy of capitalism.
Exploring how historical actors sought to make business fairer and more socially responsible suggests possibilities and lessons for the present
Market Morality and its History
Capitalist markets have their own ethical and moral frameworks and my research explores them. I examine how people have thought about fairness in markets over time. Should all market actors play by the same rules? If so, what are the rules? How are they interpreted and enforced?
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A commitment to market morality and fairness can lead to surprising changes. Explore my article in the journal Enterprise & Society that links moral ideas about fair competition with the campaign for law reform in Britain during the 1840s and 1850s. The modern corporation with limited liability emerged in Britain from these efforts in 1855 along with the legal recognition of co-operatives in 1852.​​
The History of Business and its Social Responsibilities
The Federal Council of Churches Created Numerous Reports to Guide Economic Decision-making Informed by Faith
My research also reconstructs the critical debates and historical experimentation around responsible business.
Societies around the world have debated whether business should behave "responsibly." These debates often invoke ethical or spiritual frames of reference to examine whether managers ought to serve groups other than shareholders or if profit-seeking alone should guide corporate decision-making.
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I also explore how expectations about these responsibilities have changed over time and why. These questions are explored in a volume of essays by leading business historians that I have co-edited with William Pettigrew, A History of Socially Responsible Business, c.1600–1950 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017).
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Often spiritual ideas are invoked by entrepreneurs interested in social purpose as well as by academics seeking to identify ethical schemes. I am currently finishing research exploring the relationship between faith and markets, especially the role of the Federal Council of Churches in the United States in seeding the field of business ethics during the 1950s and 1960s.
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Not everyone agrees that business has social responsibilities, of course. My article on the intellectual background to Milton Friedman's famous critique of corporate social responsibility ("CSR") contextualizes his influential arguments. It also points out the attempt to reconcile corporate profit-seeking with social good through "instrumental CSR." From this perspective, managers should pursue socially positive activities so long as they create value for the corporation, such as a more productive workforce.
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My current research examines these ideas from a global perspective and I have contributed a chapter on the history of CSR to the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Responsible Business.
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Company Law, Social Purpose and Innovation
Lady Byron, Early Cooperative Investor
The history of company law is also essential to understanding responsible business. While CSR, for example, is often understood as the voluntary activities that corporate managers undertake to pursue socially responsible ends, legal frameworks also matter. They can create incentives and value, and a level playing field for market participants. The role of government and law in shaping responsible business is particularly apparent in Europe and other countries that have had a history of more active state intervention in the market.
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I reconstruct the first period of corporate law in my law review analysis of what may be the oldest still-cited corporate law case in the Anglo-American world, The Case of Sutton's Hospital (1612). My next project is to understand the period of corporate "fission" when the dominate way of organising corporate law became a division between for- and non-profit corporates.
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I am also interested in the ways that social purpose and ethical thinking drive organisational innovation and change. New forms of business, including cooperatives and B Corps, produce greater organisational diversity in the marketplace. For example, I have recently written on Lady Byron, Christian ideas and the early co-operative movement. Lady Byron (the wife of that Byron and mother of Ada Lovelace the computer pioneer) was an important champion and investors in early nineteenth-century cooperatives. She also held very different beliefs about how cooperatives might change society than some more famous mainstream cooperators.