TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2010//
TI  - Limited liability, shareholder rights and the problem of corporate irresponsibility
JO  - Cambridge journal of economics
A1  - Ireland, Paddy
SP  - 837
EP  - 856
VL  - 34
IS  - 5
N2  - There has long been a tendency to see the corporate legal form as presently constituted as economically determined, as the more or less inevitable product of the demands of advanced technology and economic efficiency. Through an examination of its historical emergence, focusing in particular on the introduction of general limited liability and the development of the modern doctrine of separate corporate personality, this paper takes issue with this view, arguing that the corporate legal form was, and is, in large part a political construct developed to accommodate and protect the rentier investor. It is, moreover, a construct which institutionalises irresponsibility. Against this backdrop different ways of trying to resolve the problem of corporate irresponsibility are explored. The key, the paper suggests, is to be found in decoupling the privilege of limited liability from rights of control.<p /> 
LA  - 
SN  - 0309-166X
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cje/ben040
ID  - ref1
ER  -