An Exploration of Organizations as Constitutional Orders

Abstract

Much of the literature on corporate performance focuses on institutional restructuring, and implicitly assumes that constitutional factors are determined exogenously. This misses the extent to which companies can and do build unique and meaningful constitutional orders. Based on an assumption that the institutions that generate social prosperity are analogous to institutions that create corporate performance, we investigate the extent to which the field of Constitutional Political Economy can improve our understanding of organisations, and propose case studies to illustrate the theory. We make a distinction among (i) operational; (ii) institutional; and (iii) constitutional management and explore how insights from the study of nation-states can increase our understanding of the firm – and vice-versa.

Keywords: constitutional management, corporate culture, theory of the firm

JEL Classification: B52, B53, D23, Z13