Corporate Subjects
An Intellectual History of the Corporation
Corporate Subjects

Workshop: Between Public Power and Private Entity

The Corporate Subjects project hosted the conference Between Public Power and Private Entity: The Conceptual and Practical Paradox of the Corporation at Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark (21-22 August 2025).

Workshop Programme 

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Thursday 21 August 

○ 09:30: Welcome and introduction 

 

○ 10-11: Session 1

David Ciepley: Governing People or Governing Property? How Dartmouth College Privatized the Corporation by Treating it as a Trust  

Chair: Mathias Hein Jessen

 

○ 11:15-12:15: Session 2

Nicholas Gane: Understanding Capitalism, Financialization and Crisis Through Corporate Balance Sheets

Chair: Tessa Barnow

 

○ 12:15-13:15: Lunch

 

○ 13:15-14:15: Session 3

Lorraine Talbot: Corporations, Growth and the Obstacles to Human Progress

Chair: Mathias Hein Jessen

 

○ 14:45-15:45: Session 4

Lenore Palladino: The Myth that Shareholders are Always Investors (online)

Chair: Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen

 

○ 20:00 Conference dinner

Friday 22 August 

○ 09:30-10:30: session 5

Tessa Barnow & Alexander Elg: European industrial policy as reappropriating corporate franchise governments

Chair: Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen

 

○ 10:45-11:45: session 6

Johan Gersel & Morten Sørensen Thaning: The infinity of residual rights and the normative foundations of corporate governance

Chair: Mathias Hein Jessen

 

○ 11:45-12:45: Lunch 

 

○12:45-13:45: Session 7

Mark Ørberg: The Anatomy of Nonprofit Control of Business Enterprise

Chair: Johan Gersel

 

○14-15: Session 8

Mathias Hein Jessen & Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen: From person to fiction and back again – Law and economics, agency theory and the schizophrenia of corporate personhood

Chair: Morten Sørensen Thaning

 

○15-15:30: Session 9

Goodbye, round-up, publication and future collaboration

List of presenters 

  • Tessa Barnow, PhD Fellow, Department of Business Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School
  • David Ciepley, Associate Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia
  • Johan Gersel, Postdoc, Department of Business Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School
  • Mathias Hein Jessen, Associate Professor, Department of Business Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School
  • Nicholas Gane, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick
  • Lenore Palladino, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
  • Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen, Assistant Professor, Department of Business Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School
  • Lorraine Talbot, Professor, University of Birmingham, UK
  • Morten Sørensen Thaning, Associate Professor, Department of Business Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School
  • Mark Ørberg, Assistant Professor, Department of Business Humanities and Law, Copenhagen Business School, CBS Law

Links