Constructing the Company: Governance and Procedures in British and Irish Joint Stock Companies, 1720-1844

The project represents the first comprehensive examination of corporate governance in industrialising Britain. Its working hypothesis is that in enterprises large enough for a space to develop between ownership and management, this space became a political arena in which governing executives confronted their public legislatures, the assemblies of shareholders. The project tests this hypothesis through an analysis of the institutional arrangements for, and the practice of, governance in stock companies in Britain between the Bubble Act of 1720 and the Companies Act of 1844, i.e. during the century or so when the legal status of the stock company in England was most uncertain, and when its status in Scotland was still not entirely resolved. Historians, such as Alborn and Dunlavy, have argued that there was shift from democratic to plutocratic practice in business governance in Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century. The project seeks to establish the existence, timing and reasons for this shift.

本研究系学界首次针对工业化进程中的英国开展的公司治理（corporate governance）系统性全面考察。其核心研究假设为：当企业规模足够庞大时，所有权与经营权之间会形成分离空间，该空间将演变为政治场域，执掌管理权的高管将在此与作为股东集会的公共立法机构展开博弈。本研究通过分析1720年《泡沫法案（Bubble Act）》至1844年《公司法（Companies Act）》期间英国股份公司（stock company）的治理制度安排与治理实践，对上述假设进行验证。这一时期跨度约一个世纪，彼时英格兰地区股份公司的法律地位极不明朗，苏格兰地区的股份公司法律地位也尚未完全厘清。诸如阿尔本（Alborn）与邓拉维（Dunlavy）等历史学家曾提出，19世纪上半叶英国的企业治理实践曾经历从民主模式向财阀模式的转变。本研究旨在探明这一转变的存在性、发生时点及其背后动因。