Reshaping the corporation

BLT participants: Dr Gerald Acquaah-Gaisie, Associate Professor Helen Anderson, Paula Darvas, Dr Anthony Forsyth, Wayne Gumley, Ashraf Kazi, Phillip Lipton, Michelle Welsh

Outline

Researchers in this area are exploring options for increasing the recognition of non-shareholder interests (eg employees, consumers, environment, tort victims) under Australian law, including:

• changes to directors’ duties under the Corporations Act (current CAMAC and Joint Parliamentary Committee inquiries in Australia), and proposed reforms to the directors’ duties provisions in UK companies legislation
• representation of employees, environmental or consumer interests on company boards (German/EU models, including “dual board” structures)
• Australian and overseas experience with “soft law” industry self-regulation through codes, eg ASX Corporate Governance Council Recommendations, and whether such codes should be given legislative effect
• “stakeholder statutes” and other approaches in the USA
• enhancing corporate disclosure and reporting obligations

Current and proposed activities

2006

• Several BLT academics made presentations at the CLARG Research Workshop "Current Themes and Issues in Corporate Law"
  workshop program (pdf, 27kb)
  December 2006

• "Corporate social responsibility in Australia - a review" (pdf, 141 kb)
  Associate Professor Helen Anderson and Ingrid Landau
  CLARG working paper no 4
  October 2006

• Associate Professor Helen Anderson, Professor Richard Mitchell and Dr Anthony Forsyth have obtained a Department Research Grant for the project "Corporate Social Responsibility and Legal Regulation: A Case Study Analysis". (doc, 84kb)

• Submission to CAMAC Inquiry into Corporate Social Responsibility. (doc, 31kb)

• Dr Anthony Forsyth and Professor Stephen Bottomley, ANU, College of Law, have written a  "chapter  (pdf, 223kb) in "The New Corporate Accountability: Corporate Social Responsibility and the Law", to be published by Cambridge University Press.

2005

• Submission to Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, Inquiry into Corporate Responsibility. (September 2005) (doc, 253kb)

Please note that this website is currently being redeveloped and updated!

Group Director

Anthony Forsyth
Email Anthony Forsyth
Tel: + 61 3 9903-2917