Department of Management Seminar with Dr Jeroen Veldman, Bayes Business School Neoliberalisms and the corporation

Abstract: The intellectual history of the corporation is a key, yet surprisingly neglected, element in the evolution of (neo)liberal thought during the 19th and 20th centuries. The article explains how different types of liberal thought – classical liberalism, Ordo liberalism, early Chicago School neoliberalism and late Chicago School neoliberalism – developed in lockstep with the modern corporation. Specifically, the article demonstrates how liberal thought came to accept different propositions on the role of natural persons, corporations, and states, hereby justifying the continued expansion of corporate capacities and oligopolistic competition, while turning basic premises of classical liberal thought on its head. Conclusively, the article shows how successive schools of (neo)liberal thought have sought to square the organisational form of the corporation with the individualist underpinnings of liberal thought.

Bio: Prof. dr. Jeroen Veldman is Professor of Corporate Governance at Nyenrode Business Universiteit; Chairman of the Nyenrode Corporate Governance Institute; Academic Director Board and Governance, and Section Editor Corporate Governance at the Journal of Business Ethics. He is Visiting Professor at Mines Paristech and WU Vienna. His academic work can be found at https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8615-5844 and https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jeroen-Veldman?ev=hdr_xprf