Working paper Archives

Purpose-Driven Companies as Non-Extractive Legal Forms – A comparative study of English and Danish Supervisory Systems

N-EXTLAW Working Paper Series No. 10/2024

In recent years, an increasing number of companies have been motivated by social responsibility, striving to conduct their operations in an environmentally and socially conscious manner. Social and purpose-driven enterprises are often subject to external controls by public authorities of national legal systems. This paper will focus on the external supervision system for English and Danish forms of purpose-driven company to provide an answer to the functional question: which system between the English and Danish systems offers the best type of supervision for national purpose-driven enterprises?

Experimental Regulation for Social Innovations

N-EXTLAW Working Paper Series, no. 1 (2/2022).

The current economic model is damaging the social and environmental resources it relies on. This extractive model is structured by a legal system which overly focuses on economic growth instead of social and sustainable purposes. Where a legal system is based on competition and controlling organizations driven by short-term profits, organizations which tend to pursue positive contributions in the long-term experience obstructions. This paper takes social innovations as a starting point and explores how unnecessary regulatory burdens can be removed for this type of social innovation through experimental regulation.

Taking the Green Transition Seriously: A Proposal for a ‘Transition Reserve’ Enabling Transition of Large Emitters in the Netherlands

N-EXTLAW Working Paper Series, no. 1 (1/2022)

Large emitters, more so than any other company, are exposed to the risk of transition. If they do not transition, they will end up with unsustainable business models and stranded assets in the not-so-distant future, eventually going bankrupt as a result. One would hope that large emitters would take this risk seriously and invest into their own transition – but this is not necessarily the case. The incentives inherent in the contemporary model of financial markets and corporate governance, alongside the possibility of public ‘bail out’, motivate companies to distribute their funds to shareholders or managers instead of investing into the green transition.

Sustainable Contracting for a Non-Extractive Economy

N-EXTLAW Working Paper Series, no. 1 (1/2023).

Business runs on contracts, making them one of the most important legal vehicles compounding the effect of extractive capitalism. But the very ubiquity of contracts hides its potential to be refitted as an effective governance tool for just commercial transactions. Drawing on the theory of relational contract, this report repurposes commercial contracts as a relational governance device with a hybrid compliance mechanism that navigates the purpose-driven co-operation between the parties.