The corporation as an institution of global governance

This chapter makes a simple argument: given the manner in which global corporations work with their global supply and/or value chains, an approach that merely understands this as the management of a complex set of relationships misses something important about their characteristic political economy. The chapter sets out an alternative approach that suggests there is some utility to understanding corporations as having a governance function across their networks, and links that suggestion to existing accounts of global governance. The author suggests that issues of legitimate authority and even a form of democratic deficit will illuminate corporate practices more thoroughly than approaches that just look at supply chain management as a product of efficiency maximization. The chapter therefore argues that global corporations can be usefully regarded for analytical purposes as institutions of global governance themselves.