Tony Lawson's Theory of the Corporation: Towards a Social Ontology of Law
Published version
Peer-reviewed
Repository URI
Repository DOI
Change log
Authors
Deakin, Simon https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1725-5216
Abstract
In his account of the corporation as a ‘community’, Tony Lawson advances a materialist theory of social reality to argue for the existence of emergent social structures based on collective practices and behaviours, distinguishing his position from John Searle’s theory of social reality as consisting of declarative speech acts. Lawson’s and Searle’s accounts are examined for what they imply about the relationship between social structures and legal concepts. It is argued that legal concepts are themselves a feature of social reality and that a consequence of the law’s recognition of the ‘reality’ of the corporation is to open up the activities of business firm to a distinct form of normative ordering.
Description
Keywords
social ontology, the corporation, legal evolution
Journal Title
Cambridge Journal of Economics
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
0168-6445
1574-6976
1574-6976
Volume Title
41
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Publisher DOI
Sponsorship
Economic and Social Research Council (ES/J012491/1)
I ... acknowledge funding from the ESRC (Project ES/J012491/1, ‘Law, Development and Finance in Rising Powers’).