Firm Commitment

• Deals with issues of management, entrepreneurship, investment, and corporate finance
• Looks at an institution - the business corporation - with which everyone is familiar and offers an appreciation of the contribution and failure of this organization
• Written for an audience of non-specialist readers who are interested in understanding what lies behind the headlines that dominate our press
• Addresses major global business and economic problems and provides an understanding of the central issues
• Demonstrates how a combination of economics, law, and philosophy can be used to provide deep insights into the world we live in
• Numerous examples and short case studies

Readership: The general reader interested in the role of the business corporation in society. Managers, Investors, and Company Directors. Undergraduate and postgraduate students in economics, business, and politics.

Colin Mayer, Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Colin Mayer is former Dean of the Said Business School at the University of Oxford. He is an Honorary Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and of St Anne's College, Oxford. He is an Ordinary Member of the Competition Appeal Tribunal and a Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). He has served on the editorial boards of several leading academic journals and assisted in establishing the prestigious networks of economics, law and finance academics in Europe at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and ECGI. He was a Harkness Fellow at Harvard University, a Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England, and the first Leo Goldschmidt Visiting Professor of Corporate Governance at the Solvay Business School, Université de Bruxelles. He was a director of Oxera between 1986 and 2010 and was instrumental in building the firm into what is now one of the largest independent economics consultancies in the UK.

"Lucid analysis" - John Lloyd, Financial Times

"Corporate governance is manifestly in crisis: in this lucid and truly important book Colin Mayer explains why. Not only should you read this book, so should governments." - Paul Collier, author of 'The Bottom Billion'

"An impassioned and important plea for a reorientation of values in the modern corporation, offered by one of the world's leading scholars of corporate finance, ownership, and control." - Henry Hansmann, Oscar M. Ruebhausen Professor of Law, Yale Law School

"Companies and wealth generation, as Professor Colin Mayer argues in his important book, are about co-creation, sharing risk and long-term trust relationships." - Will Hutton, The Observer

"One lesson of the financial crisis is that the corporation which is a purely financial entity is a financial failure. Colin Mayer makes an important contribution to the rethinking of the nature of modern capitalism." - John Kay, Chairman, Kay Review of Equity Markets and Long Term Decision Making

"Modern theory on incentives, ownership and control of large publicly-traded corporations is broken. In Firm Commitment, Colin Mayer makes a huge and thoughtful contribution to fixing the broken theory. I heartily endorse his prescriptions — values, trustees and time-based shares — which are at the same time practical and break-through. Anyone interested in the future of democratic capitalism should read this book." - Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto

"Original and provocative, Colin Mayer's ideas on reforming the corporation deserve very serious attention." - John Roberts, Stanford Graduate School of Business and author of 'The Modern Firm'

Preface
Part 1: How the Corporation is Failing Us
1: In the Beginning
2: Morals and Markets
3: Reputation
4: Regulation
Part 2: Why It Is Happening
5: Evolving Enterprises
6: Bought and Closed
7: Capital and Commitment
Part 3: What We Should Do About It
8: Value and Values
9: Governance and Government
10: Without End
Appendix: References and Further Readings