Kellogg College and the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship are delighted to welcome acclaimed economist, Sir John Kay, for a conversation about his new book, The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century: Why (Almost) Everything We Are Told About Business Is Wrong (Profile Books, 2024).

The book surveys the vast economic transformations that have occurred since the days of Adam Smith and Karl Marx, when capitalists built and controlled mills and factories. In contrast, both products and production today are increasingly dematerialized: the goods and services provided by the leading companies of the twenty-first century appear on your screen, fit in your pocket, or occupy your head. As Sir John argues, the consequences of this shift are upending classic ideas about the means of production, capital, and corporate power.

Alongside Sir John, the conversation will feature Professor Joshua Getzler of the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, Suzanne Schneider, Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College and Mary Johnstone-Louis, Senior Fellow of Management Practice at University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.

Sir John Kay is one of Britain’s leading economists with wide practical experience in business and finance. He has served as director of several public companies, founded his own business, and managed investment portfolios. A Fellow of the British Academy and Royal Society of Edinburgh, he was the founding dean of Oxford University’s Saïd Business School and has held chairs at London Business School and the London School of Economics. He is a winner of the Senior Wincott Award for Financial Journalism for his Financial Times columns. Other People’s Money won the Saltire Prize for non-fiction and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. His recent books include Obliquity, The Long and Short of It, Greed is Dead (written with Paul Collier) and Radical Uncertainty (with Mervyn King). His latest book, The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century, is published on August 29th.

Joshua Getzler is Professor of Law and Legal History at the University of Oxford. He is a visiting professor at UNSW and NYU, and recently joined Cornerstone Barristers in Gray’s Inn London as an associate member. Joshua was educated at the Australian National University in history and law, and then as a research student at Balliol and Nuffield Colleges and the Oxford Law Faculty, taking a doctorate in legal and economic history. He has acted as legal adviser to governments, law firms, attorneys, and private clients, in a range of UK, American, New Zealand, Canadian and transnational cases. He serves on the editorial board of the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies and the Journal of Equity and is co-editor of both the American Journal of Legal History and the OUP monograph series Oxford Legal History. In his modern legal research he studies equity, trusts, property, and corporate and financial market regulation. In his historical research he works on public finance, private banking and investment, property, trust, corporate and charitable forms, native title, and the 18th - 19th C judicial system.

Suzanne Schneider is a historian, writer, and Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College. She is deputy director and core faculty at Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and the lead organizer of the Risk Reconsidered Working Group. Suzanne is the author of Mandatory Separation: Religion, Education, and Mass Politics in Palestine and The Apocalypse and the End of History: Modern Jihad and the Crisis of Liberalism. Her writing about contemporary politics, risk, and violence has appeared in The New Republic, New Statesman, Mother Jones, The Washington Post, Dissent, Foreign Policy, and Aeon among other outlets. She is currently working on a new book about the politics of risk.

Mary Johnstone-Louis is Senior Fellow of Management Practice at University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School where she is Co-Director for the Oxford Leading Sustainable Corporations programme and the Oxford Sustainable Business Programme. Mary is a Fellow of the Skoll Centre, a Senior Associate of Oxford Net Zero, and Senior Fellow of the Business Fights Poverty Institute. She has served in a range of advisory roles including as a World Economic Forum Global Future Council Fellow and is currently a trustee of Blueprint for Better Business and Chair of B Lab UK.. Her written contributions have been featured in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Business Ethics Quarterly, and in the United Nations Global Compact’s Principles for Responsible Management Education series.

A book sale and signing will follow the event.

Refreshments will be served from 5pm; the talk will begin at 5.30pm. Post-event drinks will be served in the Hub at 6.45pm.

This event is free and open to all.

This event will be photographed and filmed. If you do not wish to appear in the photographs/footage, please let the photographer/videographer know.

Should you have any further queries, or be unable to attend after booking, please contact events@kellogg.ox.ac.uk

The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century: An evening with Sir John Kay