Business Persons

Eric W. Orts is the Guardsmark Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a secondary appointment in Management. He is the faculty director of the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership and a co-faculty director of the FINRA Institute at Wharton. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Leuven, the University of Michigan Law School, NYU School of Law, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, the University of Sydney Law School, and UCLA School of Law. His research focuses on business theory, corporate law, ethics, and sustainability.

• Introduction - The Recognition and Boundaries of the Firm ; 1. Foundations of the Firm I: Business Entities and Legal Persons ; 2. Foundations of the Firm II: Agency, Contracts, and Property ; 3. The Public/Private Distinction: Two Faces of the Business Enterprise ; 4. Enterprise Liability, Business Participant Liability, and Limited Liability ; 5. The Nomenclature of Enterprise: A Taxonomy of Modern Business Firms ; 6. Managing and Regulating the Shifting Boundaries of the Firm ; 7. Two Applications ; Conclusion

Whereas recent decades of scholarship on the nature of the firm have stressed economic and finance theory, Orts frames the analysis as centrally about law and legal theory. The book employs an ethics-focused, multi-perspective approach and draws extensive parallels to the history and philosophy of law. It re-elevates the once-prominent roles of agency, contract, and property law and theory in asking and answering many of the classic questions about the firm [and] includes important insights into the modern taxonomy of firms and their shifting boundaries, as well as practical contributions to current policy debate ... Orts has been one of the leading voices advocating a more nuanced view of the firm, and he now delivers a thoroughly researched and foundational new book that is a must read for anyone thinking seriously about the theory of the modern firm.