Researcher from Copenhagen Business School receives a grant from Indenpendent Research Fund Denmark

Independent Research Fund Denmark allocates 230,400 DKK to CBS researcher Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen’s project.

The project will examine how democratisation can help corporations pursue targets other than the maximisation of shareholder value.

Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen is an associate professor at the Department of Business Humanities and Law.

A new way of thinking corporations

Corporations are among the most influential organisational forms in present-day societies and responsible for the main part of the world’s economic growth, but also for the main part of global carbon emissions.

Corporations have many different interested parties, including employees, leaders, shareholders, local communities and environmental organisations. The prevalent business doctrine prompts directors, management and boards to structure business activities such that they maximise shareholders’ interests, namely, dividends. This, however, is at the expense of the corporation’s other interested parties.

“My research project examines the way in which corporations can democratise in order to enhance their employees’ influence and prompt corporations to pursue other goals than the maximisation of shareholder value,” Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen explains, and then continues:

“In order to do this, I’m drawing on ressources from democracy theory as well as political and economic history of ideas. Ever since the first corporations were established in the 1600s, there has been an intense debate about the character, structure and purpose of corporations. This debate can be used to propose ways of democratising corporations today.”

Research residency among the leaders in the field

The grant will facilitate a residency at the University of California, Santa Cruz, at the Department of History of Consciousness, from April until July, 2025.

Here, the world’s leading researchers on political theory, political and economic history of ideas and political economy, which is also Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen’s main areas of research, come together.

“This residency will provide me with a concrete opportunity to finish a special edition on the role of corporations in the green transition as well as an article on how corporations can be democratised in the future,” Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen says. According to the researcher, a residency like this may furthermore lead to important contacts that will enhance research collaborations between CBS and UC Santa Cruz in the long-term.

Impact on the big challenges of modern-day societies

The research project aims at changing the general understanding of corporations’ legal framework and the ensuing political and economic consequences.

“By studying the historic political and conceptual battles about corporations’ role in the economy, I can hopefully contribute to corporations and the big publicly quoted companies playing a progressive role in terms of our current big challenges such as the climate crisis and financial inequality”, Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen rounds off.

Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen’s project is a part of the research project  Corporate Subjects: An Intellectual History of the Corporation.