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Managers seek to manage their relations with investors, as with other stakeholders. This chapter outlines three elements in managerial handling of investors. The first is the role of the board of directors, especially the role of non-executive directors. The second is the management of relations with actual or potential investors in the firm. The third is the management of relations with the investment community. It shows the pattern of interdependence between managers and investors, rather than dominance by either side.

This is a tale of two cities—Butte, Montana, USA; and Chuquicamata, Chile—intimate strangers, linked through their histories as the copper-producing hubs of the Anaconda Company. Butte and Chuquicamata are connected in a labyrinthine history of political and economic intrigues that defy above-ground detection. This chapter notes the call for the engagement of history and ethnography in understanding the intersection of global processes and local life. It enables one to take a long-term look at large-scale political and economic shifts, patterns of corporate practice, and the articulation of these forces with peoples' lived experiences. Questions of gender and power, class and community are at the center of a story that moves beyond abstractions to a concrete and culturally informed analysis of the making of a mining way of life.

In recent years, new demands for legalizing and for establishing a right to humanitarian intervention have been firmly placed on the international agenda. Still, most attention is given to the actions of states and suprastate bodies that are expected to intervene in protecting the human rights of victim populations. This chapter argues that the duties of multinational corporations (MNCs) that operate in areas where humanitarian intervention is considered should also be addressed. The primary theoretical and empirical effort is to show how contemporary corporate practices are geared away from assuming binding legal obligations. Fusing analytical and normative dimensions, the discussion develops as follows. It first introduces the field of corporate social responsibility, points to some of its most basic characteristics, and highlights some of the conceptual debates about the desired meaning and application of the term. It then considers some basic principles of humanitarianism and point to some leading trends and debates concerning its trajectory. The third section argues that through their respective locations within the neoliberal conceptual framework of the relationship among states, markets, and civil society, we can appreciate the structural homology between prevalent practices of humanitarianism and contemporary corporate-inspired notions of social responsibility. The fourth and fifth sections consider two concrete cases in which corporate social responsibility and humanitarianism intermesh or potentially intermesh. The chapter concludes with some remarks concerning future potential obligations of corporations in times of catastrophes.

This concluding chapter summarizes the major points of the preceding chapters. For the period up to World War I, it became clear that the elites of the United States, and its businessmen on the East and West coasts in particular, saw their country as a highly dynamic and modern industrial and financial power. Based on the idea of a competitive capitalism, American big business, in the wake of the great merger wave of the late nineteenth century and congressional legislation that had banned the formation of cartels and monopolies, developed in the direction of an oligopolistic market organization. These developments shaped corporate attitudes and practices toward the domestic and international economy from 1900 onward. No less important, the emergence of the United States as a major industrial power stirred Britain and Germany into responses to the American challenge.

This chapter upends usual discussions of neoliberal governmentality by focusing on the relation of neoliberalism to the irrational. The central task of neoliberalism in its early days was to resurrect a discredited liberalism. WW I and the problematic Versailles Peace of 1919 convinced many that irrationality lay at the core of the “civilized” European world. Those who became neo-liberal (before the hyphen was eliminated) embraced that which was irrational while resolutely attacking all kinds of collectivism. Early neoliberals such as Mises equated socialists with savages and put socialists in what Trouillot called “The Savage Slot,” thanks to their wilful overthrow of the free market price system, without which rationality itself could not exist. Hayek and the next generation of neoliberals shifted the source of irrationality into the physiology of individual humans. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union against which early neoliberal polemics were aimed, tacit knowledge moved out of the body to the corporation via Jean Lave’s concept of communities of practice. The chapter draws on classic works in anthropology; history of economic thought; US corporate history; and obscure annals of the public sector in Egypt to make these arguments.

This chapter examines how information provision can be harnessed in the Indian context to strengthen environmental compliance and to induce sustainable practices on the part of corporations. Recent years have witnessed the emergence of innovative policy instruments—such as emission trading and other market-based instruments—to induce corporations to manage environmental risks more carefully. One such policy tool involves having corporations disclose publicly their emissions into air, water, and land. The aftermath of the Bhopal tragedy resulted in the United States employing this policy measure in the form of SARA Title III or the Community Right-to-Know Act. Once such information is publicly available, it can be used by non-governmental organizations to highlight the risks posed by corporations to the communities within which they operate. Such information can result in adverse public perceptions and pressure on corporations to change their practices.