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Sutherland, Philip --- "Globalization and Corporate Law" [2010] ELECD 295; in Faure, Michael; van der Walt, André (eds), "Globalization and Private Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Globalization and Private Law

Editor(s): Faure, Michael; van der Walt, André

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848447608

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Globalization and Corporate Law

Author(s): Sutherland, Philip

Number of pages: 86

Extract:

9. Globalization and corporate law
Philip Sutherland

1 INTRODUCTION
[I]f asked to specify what they understand by `globalization', most people reply
with considerable hesitation, vagueness and inconsistency. Moreover, much discus-
sion of globalization is steeped in oversimplification, exaggeration and wishful
thinking. In spite of a deluge of publications on the subject, analyses of globaliza-
tion tend on the whole to remain conceptually inexact, empirically thin, historically
ill-informed, economically and/or culturally illiterate, normatively shallow and
politically naive.1

The globalization debate has become intense in recent years as there is much
at stake.2 This chapter will consider the impact of globalization on corporate
law by focusing on multinational corporations (MNCs) and their regulation. In
doing so it will fall into all of the traps mentioned. It starts with an evaluation
of globalization, MNCs and corporate law theory in order to set the stage for
further analysis. It will then consider the different manifestations of corporate
regulation of MNCs in the globalized environment.


2 WHAT IS GLOBALIZATION?
The term globalization has been used to label almost every important phenom-
enon of the last twenty years.3 The concept has become so controversial that it
is almost impossible to give any uncontested account of it. Perhaps the most
helpful, but at the same time vague, definition is that globalization is a `process
of intensifying interconnectedness'.4 Not only may this interconnectedness


1 Scholte (2005, pp. 1­2).
2 Stiglitz (2006, p. 288).
3 Scholte (2005, p. 15).
4 Kaldor ( ...