Beate Sjafjell

Company Law and Sustainability: Legal Barriers and Opportunities Beate Sjafjell

Marc Notes: Business law, and above all company law, must be transformed to encourage environmentally responsible business. This book highlights the inadequacies of both environmental law and voluntary corporate social responsibility. Its suggestions for reform and its multinational scope makes it essential reading for scholars, policy-makers, and business managers worldwide. Brief Description: Advances an innovative, multi-jurisdictional argument for the necessity of company law reform to reorient companies towards environmental sustainability. Table of Contents: 1. Capitalism, the sustainability crisis and the limitations of current business governance Benjamin J. Richardson and Beate Sjafjell; 2. Corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability David Millon; 3. Shareholder primacy: the main barrier to sustainable companies Beate Sjafjell, Andrew Johnston, Linn Anker-Sorensen and David Millon; 4. The role of board directors in promoting environmental sustainability Blanaid Clarke; 5. Accounting, auditing and reporting: supporting or obstructing the sustainable companies objective? Charlotte Villiers and Jukka Mahonen; 6. Financial markets and socially responsible investing Benjamin J. Richardson; 7. Limits to corporate reform and alternative legal structures Carol Liao; 8. The future for company law and sustainability Beate Sjafjell and Benjamin J. Richardson."Brief Description: "This investigation of the barriers to and opportunities for promoting environmental sustainability in company law provides an in-depth comparative analysis of company law regimes across the world. The social norm of shareholder primacy is the greatest barrier to progress, and it also helps explain why voluntary action by companies and investors alone is insufficient. By deconstructing the myth that shareholder primacy has a legal basis and challenging the economic postulates on which the mainstream corporate governance debate is based, Company Law and Sustainability reveals the surprisingly large unexplored potential in current company law regimes for companies to reorient themselves towards sustainability. It also suggests possible methods of reforming the existing legal infrastructure for companies and makes an important contribution to the wider debate on how to achieve sustainability"--

Contributor Bio:  Sjafjell, Beate Beate Sjafjell heads the international network of scholars in the Sustainable Companies Project, on which much of the groundbreaking research in this book is based. Professor Sjafjell is also the head of the University of Oslo's research group Companies, Markets, Society and the Environment (jus.uio.no/companies) as well as of its European Law Network.