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Corporations
in Context
Books
| Articles
and Reports | Educational Materials
In the course of developing a deeper
understanding of today’s economic realities,
researchers at the Global Development And Environment
Institute have generated a number of writings that
deal with the role and the nature of corporations.
Links from this page will take you to these works,
or to information about them.
Books
Introducing Economics:
A Critical Guide for Teaching
 Mark H. Maier and Julie A. Nelson
M.E. Sharpe,
June 2007
This guide for high school teachers is designed to help instructors counter the
narrowness (and, often, right-wing bias) of many high school economics
curriculum materials. Following the outline of a typical high school textbook, it
gives a broader view of arguments on topics including consumption, labor,
corporations, the environment, and globalization. In addition, the volume
includes a history of the development of high school economics, a description
of the competing schools of economics, critical commentary on each of the
Voluntary National Content Standards for economics, and an annotated guide
to the major organizations involved in high school economics teaching. Read
more about this book.
It’s
Legal But It Ain’t Right: Harmful Social
Consequences of Legal Industries
 “No
one concerned with literate, informed and relevant
– as distinct from self-serving –
truth should miss It’s Legal But It Ain’t
Right.” – John Kenneth Galbraith
Edited by Nikos Passas and Neva
Goodwin, as part of GDAE’s University of
Michigan Press series, “Evolving
Values for a Capitalist World,” It's
Legal But it Ain't Right offers ten chapters
that discuss how society can confront the negative
effects of:
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the cigarette
industry
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international
arms trade
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the handgun
industry
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private
armies
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legalized
gambling
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Read more about the book including an excerpt
from the book's introduction
Evolving Values for a Capitalist World
 A
book series from Michigan Press
Neva R. Goodwin, Series Editor
In most of the world today, the issue is not whether
or how to embrace capitalism, but how to make
the best of it. The currently dominant capitalist
values include competitive individualism, instrumental
rationality, and material success. This Michigan
Press series explores questions such as: Will
these values suffice as a basis for social organizations
that can meet human and environmental needs in
the twenty-first century? What would it mean for
capitalist systems to evolve toward an emphasis
on other values, such as cooperation, altruism,
responsibility, and concern for the future? Read
more about the Evolving Values book series.
 “...a
classic collection of key articles on the changing
nature and dynamics of multinational enterprises in
the global economy.” – David Teece,
University of California, Berkeley
Edited by Alfred Chandler (Harvard Business School)
and Bruce Mazlish (MIT), published by Cambridge
University Press, Leviathans includes “A
primer on multinational corporations” by GDAE
researcher, Brian Roach, and “The social impacts
of multinational corporations” by GDAE Co-director,
Neva Goodwin. The book covers the scope, history
and development, cultural and social implications,
and governance problems of multinational corporations,
with an emphasis on their role in the globalization
process. Read
more about the book.
Economics
for Humans
 “Julie
Nelson ...cares enough about people to insist that
we recognize the full range of our economically
valuable activities, from the unpaid provision of
personal care to the ethical management of corporations.
In this sparkling, passionate, personal book Nelson
shows how to humanize economics without abandoning
its commitment to rigorous description and explanation.”
-- Viviana A. Zelizer, author of The Purchase
of Intimacy
Is it asking too much to demand that businesses
be socially and environmentally responsible? Many,
believing that economies are cold and heartless
systems that operate outside human control, would
answer yes. But in this impassioned and perceptive
work, Julie A. Nelson debunks theories that teach
us that our economic lives are somehow separate
from our moral values and our human relationships.
August 2006 from University of Chicago
Press. Read
more about this book.
Articles
and Reports
Capital Choices: National Systems of Investment is an article by Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School which surveys the complex topic of national investment practices. It describes the interlinked changes that would be necessary to make the U.S. system more effective in directing capital to those firms that can deploy it most productively and, within firms, to the most productive investment projects. It is Chapter 1 in As if the Future Mattered: Translating Social and Economic Theory into Human Behavior (in the series Evolving Values for a Capitalist World – see above).
Two papers by Neva Goodwin analyze “The
Meaning of Wal-Mart for Economic Theory, and in our
Lives.”
The
High Cost of Low Prices (published in Orion, January/February
2006, Vol. 25, No. 1, p.11. Reprinted courtesy of
Orion, www.orionmagazine.org) is based on the longer presentation
Goodwin wrote for SRI in the Rockies, What
You Didn’t Learn in Ec 101
(presented at the 15th Annual Social
Investment Forum, SRI in the Rockies, October 9, 2004).
Julie Nelson's working paper Beyond
Small-Is-Beautiful (GDAE Working Paper No.
04-01) argues that a relational understanding of firms
and markets can help move debates about ethics and
business beyond issues of scale.
Working papers and policy briefs from GDAE’s Feeding the Factory Farm project identify and analyze the subsidies that industrial, corporate-owned livestock production facilities receive as a result of U.S. farm policy.
Educational
Materials
Microeconomics
in Context
 Most
university level introductory economics textbooks
limit their discussion of businesses to only the traditional
theories of monopoly and oligopoly. As one of its
many innovations designed to stimulate student interest
and critical thinking, this introductory microeconomics
textbook features a chapter that looks more deeply
into issues of corporate goals and organization, and
the social impact of large companies in a globalizing
world. (See Chapter 16.) Microeconomics in Context, Second Edition provides a thorough introduction to the principles
of microeconomics, but it also delves deeper, offering
a fresh portrait of the economic realities of the
21st century. Published by M.E. Sharpe, this
text examines economic activity in its environmental
and social contexts, drawing on traditional economic
principles as well as new research, to give students
greater insight into our economic world. Read
more about other GDAE textbooks.
Teaching Module on Corporate Power in a Global Economy
Standard economic theory fails to address the economic
and political significance of modern multinational
corporations. In this module, authored by Brian Roach, explanations of firm
growth based on economies of scale and scope are supplemented
with a discussion of the transnational mobility and
influence of large corporations. The social and environmental
responsibilities of multinationals are considered,
with an emphasis on externalities and the need for
a “triple bottom line.” The module concludes
with a discussion of ways to encourage large firms
to adopt goals that are aligned with the broader goals
of society. The student reading consists of 35 pages
which includes discussion questions, glossary, references,
and additional resources. Go
to the registration page to download this module.
Read more about
GDAE Teaching Modules
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