How do decisions get made in an organisation? Who has power and control – and are they the same people who bear the consequences of their decisions? In this second episode of Corporate Bodies, we explore governance and limited liability – a form of legal protection for shareholders and owners of companies that prevents individuals from being held personally responsible for their company's debts or financial losses.
Limited liability is something Kate and Mark previously identified as one of the “original sins” that impacts the way we run companies today. Here, they talk about their own experience of how power shifted at Shared Assets in a moment of crisis.
They also interview Sarah McAdam, a Co-Steward at the Transformational Governance Collective, who talks about how we can take a much wider view of governance, what healthy power looks like, how we can distribute power more widely in organisations, and whether we should be able to consent to giving and receiving power.
Resources:
Find more on the original sins here – incorporation, limited liability, legal personhood and employment contracting.
Read the article accompanying the episode here.
Articles and resources referenced in this episode:
#BeyondtheRules — Balanced governance and ‘behaving well’ everywhere, every day: Annette Dhami, Thomas Theodore and Himanshu Rohilla, Dark Matter Labs
Transformational Governance Collective
Shared Assets’ draft Leadership Manifesto
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Email us: at corporatebodiespodcast@gmail.com
Presenters:
Kate Swade (she/her), independent organisational development and governance consultant
Mark Walton (he/him), Founder and Director, Shared Assets
Interviewee:
Sarah McAdam (she/her), Co-Steward, Transformational Governance Collective
Editor: Katie Revell (she/her)
Artwork: Hanna Norberg-Williams (they/them)
Supporters:
The series is supported by the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), which is a cutting edge research organisation based at the University of Surrey. CUSP explores the question: What does prosperity mean in a world of environmental, social, and economic limits? For more details, visit cusp.ac.uk.
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