Corporate Reform After Enron

The Corporate Reform Moment

Even George Bush now agrees that it is important to promote "corporate responsibility." The Enron, WorldCom and related corporate scandals have created a unique opportunity to talk and think about corporate power, corporate form and the rules governing corporate behavior.

In this special issue of Multinational Monitor, we hope to help kickstart a discussion that has -- in the mass media, and on Capitol Hill, at least -- remained too confined to the financial sphere, too timid and too remote from structural proposals. In the articles and interviews in this issue, corporate accountability strategists of different stripes offer an array of diverse approaches to confront and control corporate power. MORE>>

Commons Sense: Community Ownership and the Displacement of Corporate Control

by David Bollier

Something curious is happening to the near-religious faith that private property and markets are the only serious tools for improving people's lives. Slowly and unpredictably, like irrepressible plant life pushing its way through crumbling pavement, new models of community-based management are sprouting forth while old models are re-discovered.

Call it the renaissance of the commons, a quiet insurgency with diverse manifestations. It consists of new policy models such as stakeholder trusts, locally managed natural resources, innovations in private contracts, and bold reinterpretations of public trust doctrine in environmental law and the public domain in copyright law.

But this proto-movement is not just about policy, but also about a cultural rediscovery of public collaboration. The Internet, the biggest and most robust commons in history, has a lot to do with this trend. It has provided the crucial infrastructure for thousands of commons such as websites, list serves, open source software development and peer-to-peer file sharing. MORE>>

An Answer to Marketization: Decommodification and the Assertion of Rights to Essential Services

by Patrick Bond

Johannesburg -- A post-apartheid upsurge of protest against worsening class and gender inequality in South Africa is beginning to shape a new strategy to limit the corporate drive to marketize essential services.

From the townships of Soweto and other urban ghettos, to the many rural areas which have still not received piped water, poor communities are demanding a "lifeline" supply of water and electricity. And calls are rising for free access to antiretroviral medicines, for five million HIV-positive South Africans, few of whom can afford life-saving drug treatments. Such demands, based upon the political principle of "decommodification," may be the key to locking the door on services privatization. MORE>>

Overturning the Economic Aristocracy: Toward New Models of Corporate Control

An Interview with Marjorie Kelly

Marjorie Kelly is the co-founder and publisher of Business Ethics, a Minneapolis-based publication on corporate social responsibility. Kelly is the author of The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy. She contributes a weekly column to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and is a frequent contributor to a wide array of national publications. MORE>>

Ownership and Sustainability: The Case for Shareholder Activism to Promote Corporate Responsibility

An Interview with Robert Monks

Robert Monks is the world's highest profile shareholder activist. He founded Lens, an institutional shareholder activist fund, and Institutional Shareholder Services, now the leading provider of proxy voting and corporate governance services. He served in the Department of Labor as Administrator of the Office of Pension and Welfare Benefit Programs, having jurisdiction over the entire U.S. pension system, and has served on numerous corporate boards of directors. He is the author of several books, including The Emperor's Nightingale: Restoring the Integrity of the Corporation in the Age of Shareholder Activism, The New Global Investors: How Shareholders Can Unlock Sustainable Prosperity Worldwide, and Corporate Governance (with Nell Minow). MORE>>