The Nature of the Firm as Corporate Actor: Relational Economics and the Challenges of Legal Personhood

The chapter deals with the nature of the firm. The question of the nature of the firm is posed here from the perspective of the firm as a cooperative actor. Based on arguments for a perspective of the firm as a corporate actor, the nature of the firm is the (corporate) intention of the corporate actor to realize shared value creation and therefore to relationalize stakeholders’ ability and willingness to cooperate in the process and to enable and ensure it in the form of legitimate governance of stakeholder resources and interests. This perspective requires a distinction between a traditional theory of the firm and a relational (constructivist) theory of the firm. Against the background of this distinction, the understanding of corporate intentionality must be defined, on the one hand, and questions of leadership and the logic of economic action within the firm as well as the consideration and involvement of stakeholders must be redefined, on the other. An alternative theory of the firm is necessary if we do not want to remain at the level of bonobo monkeys in economic theorizing.