The Open Corporation: Effective Self-regulation and Democracy

The Open Corporation, originally published in 2002, set out a blueprint for effective corporate self-regulation, offering practical strategies for managers, stakeholders and regulators to build successful self-regulation management systems. Christine Parker examined the conditions under which corporate self-regulation of social and legal responsibilities were 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 argued that law and regulators needed to focus much more on ‘meta-regulating’ corporate self-regulation if democratic control over corporate action was to be established.