It’s easy to assume that all businesses (of any scale at least) are corporations, and that all corporations are run the same. They have executive leadership, boards of directors, and their overriding aim is to make profit for their investors. This is how most large corporations are organized and operate; and you could be forgiven for assuming that this is just the way things work. That said, close readers of this volume have likely intuited that this way of running a business is in fact historically specific, and owes a lot to neoliberal ideas about how a business and how society should work (hierarchically, with a minimum of democracy, and all organized to generate profits and reward shareholder owners). Here, Wood and Palladino take these assumptions apart by illustrating all the different way that other people (even workers!) can in fact own and control companies. One simple thing this chapter shows is that in designing a business or organizing a company, it doesn’t need to be top-down and oriented toward maximizing shareholder value; but can be oriented toward other values, and these values can be reflected in its organization.

This introductory chapter frames the issue of companies and their role in the climate crisis. It lays out the science of climate change and the causal connection between the historic and present contributions of companies to climate change through their greenhouse gas emissions. The chapter highlights the global temperature goals under the Paris Agreement and the consequential emission reductions it necessitates. This chapter also introduces some key concepts in company law theory such as shareholder primacy and shareholder wealth maximization and their role in Anglo-American company law. The chapter provides an explanation of a number of corporate forms, including traditional for-profit corporate models (both private and public) as well as a variety of hybrid and social enterprise forms. The imperatives of profit making, as illustrated by dominant corporate norms, are relevant (in varying degrees) to all of these corporate forms. The chapter concludes with a summary of systemic barriers of short-termism as well as opportunities such as corporate social responsibility and societal expectations which surround companies in the context of climate change, and why the United Kingdom is used as a model jurisdiction.