Power and Responsibility: Rethinking Corporations for the Public Interest
About this Event
Corporations have amassed great power to shape societies: their products determine our patterns of consumption, communication, working and now even thinking. Tech companies have introduced social media and AI, fossil fuel companies shape our energy systems, financial institutions determine the course of investment. On a regular basis, this creates anxieties: who is accountable for the choices companies make? Are these choices sufficiently in line with the public interest? Such anxieties are nothing new: since the invention of the corporate structure, they have been heard on a regular basis. This lecture situates current debates about corporate profit-making and ‘purpose’ in this larger history, and discusses options for reforming corporations so that their actions align (more) with the public interest.
This event is part of The World in 1776/2026, a public engagement project of the University of Glasgow marking the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, produced in partnership with Glasgow Life, Radical Glasgow, and the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights.
This is has also be co-sponsored by the Political Economy Futures Forum Interdisciplinary Research Theme (IRT). You can find out more about this IRT here: https://www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/socialsciences/research/interdisciplinaryresearchthemes/peff/
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 0.00
