Industrial democracy and industrial legality in Canada: A critique of communitarian corporate law

The thesis interrogates the latest take on industrial democracy---characterized as "employee participation in corporate governance"---advocated by Communitarian corporate law academics in both Canada and the United States. Both the Communitarian adherence to stakeholder theory of the corporation as well as their proposal to expand the fiduciary duty of corporate directors and their agents receive primary attention. After locating industrial democratic schemes within a model of ideal types in chapter one, the thesis develops two lines of critique. First, the second chapter develops a critique of Communitarian scholarship based on the close relationship to both democratic elite theory and earlier forms of "progressive" corporate law.

Second, the thesis offers a critique based on the form of legality, namely industrial legality, contained in Communitarian scholarship. The third chapter argues that, while Communitarian scholarship seeks to correct the outdated nature of the content of corporate law, it does so at the expense of a full critique of liberal law's form. The relationship between corporate law and labour law (among other areas), and the link between liberal law and capitalist relations overall, are fundamental to a complete depiction of industrial legality. Organized around a modified form of industrial legality, this third chapter endeavours to clear the way for future research aimed at re-articulating the framework for studying the regulation of labour and corporate power in the twenty-first century. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)