The Modern Corporation Project

Corporate Governance for the 21st Century

Corporate governance is a core issue for contemporary societies and for the management of organizations. Recent statements by Larry Fink, the Business Roundtable and the World Economic Forum, as well as the European Green Deal and the French Loi Pacte address the intimate link between the theory and practice of corporate governance and the capacity to engage with systemic risks like climate change and social inequality.

The Modern Corporation Project, directed by Dr. Jeroen Veldman at Nyenrode Business University and Prof. Hugh Willmott at Bayes (formerly Cass) Business School, identifies approaches to the theory and practice of corporate governance that enable an effective engagement with sustainability and stakeholder interests. The Academy of Management awarded the Project the International Impactful Collaboration Award in 2019.

Initial outcomes of the Project include five succinct statements on corporate governance prepared and endorsed by leading international academics from Company Law, Economics, Accounting, Management and Politics and a Statement on Corporate Governance for Sustainability, which was covered on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.

In partnership with the Purpose of the Corporation Project, the Project identified, developed and tested practical proposals for a different corporate governance model with an international multi-stakeholder network. These proposals were presented to the European Commission in 2016 in a well-received report.

In 2020 the Project delivered a Call to Action on Sustainable Corporate Governance, which was signed by leading practitioners and academics, including Professor Mervyn King S.C., IIRC Chair Emeritus and author of King corporate governance codes; Paul Polman, Co-Founder & Chair, IMAGINE (former CEO of Unilever); Kerrie Waring, CEO, International Corporate Governance Network; Bob Moritz, Global Chairman, PwC; Gilbert Van Hassel, CEO, Robeco; Bob Tricker, Professor; Robert G. Eccles, Visiting Professor, University of Oxford; Gerald Davis, Professor, University of Michigan and Ioannis Ioannou, Associate Professor, London Business School. The Call to Action has attracted attention from the Wall Street Journal; Le Monde and the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.

All academic outputs of the Modern Corporation Project can be found on Researchgate. Recent outputs of the Project include:

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