The Open Corporation: Effective Self-regulation and Democracy

The Open Corporation sets out an innovative and realistic blueprint for effective corporate self-regulation, offering practical strategies for managers, stakeholders and regulators to build successful self-regulation management systems. Christine Parker examines the conditions under which corporate self-regulation of social and legal responsibilities is likely to be effective, covering a wide range of areas - from consumer protection to sexual harassment to environmental compliance. Focusing on the features that make self-regulation or compliance management systems effective, Parker argues that law and regulators need to focus much more on 'meta-regulating' corporate self-regulation if democratic control over corporate action is to be established. For Parker, the ideal of the open corporation should be a union between government, democracy and the law.