ReValue - Thinking Infrastructurally about Economic Value for a Socio-Ecological Transformation
The ReValue project analyses the rules and policies of key private governance institutions in the fields of accounting and stock-exchanges. The aim of ReValue is to examine the place and role that these institutions are having or could have in the transition towards more sustainable business activities throughout transnational markets.
Enhancing the sustainability of the global economy has become crucial policy goal and normative aspiration of today. Driven by the Paris Agreement, the European Green Deal package, or widespread modes of climate change protest and litigation, until now the political and scholarly focus to foster this green transition has been mainly placed on targeting governments and lead firms in key industries, such as banking, energy, or retail. This has been largely done through instilling ambitious carbon-neutrality goals that seek to realign the investment, production, and commercialization practices throughout their respective global supply chains with these sustainability aspirations.
ReValue transcends this focus. This research project departs from the insight that to transform business activities towards more sustainable pathways, it is not enough to only target key market-players. If the preservation of our planet requires corporations to ‘act differently’, we need to scrutinize how could corporations ‘think differently’. This can be done by placing the focus on certain key private regulators that currently hold the authority to constitute transnational markets and thereby to transform them towards more sustainable pathways.
Through the combination of new infrastructural perspectives in legal analysis with recent developments in economic philosophy, political ecology, and socio-legal methods, the overall aspiration driving ReValue is thus to contribute to a cognitive transformation of corporations towards sustainability. This is pursued by examining some crucial legal-regulatory infrastructures that nowadays configure the managerial rationality of what counts as economically worthy business.
This project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Framework Programme for Research and Innovation under a Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship 2021 (Project Number: 101068203) and proceeds through three correlated working packages.
WP1 sets out the central analytical pillars by synthesizing recent developments in socio-economic theory and political philosophy regarding changing conceptions of economic value in market economies.
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WP2 will elaborate the specialised studies of the project based on the theoretical framework developed in WP1 by focusing on the predominant accounting and stock-exchanges institutions within transnational markets. It will do so by providing a thorough account of the background, norms, and processes that inform the regulatory activities of these private governance institutions. The research objective of this WP2 is to develop a sustained understanding of the modes of socio-economic valuing that currently inform the regulatory practices of these key private governance institutions that shape corporate preferences and business activities in the global economy. |
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WP3 will analyse the data gathered through the specialised studies of WP2 and provide an overall assessment regarding the suitability and desirability of the different sustainability norms and policies that are being developed in practice by these institutions. This evaluation will be executed according to the theoretical/normative framework defined in WP1. On these bases, WP3 will also elaborate some concrete policy recommendations of how to enhance policy integrity and potentially re-align the legal-regulatory practices of these institutions with sustainability aspirations. |
Researchers
| Name | Title | Image |
|---|---|---|
| Ulfbeck, Vibe Garf | Head of Centre, Professor |
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| Vallejo Garreton, Rodrigo Javier | Marie Curie Fellow |
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Funding
This project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Framework Programme for Research and Innovation under a Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship 2021 (Horizon-MSCA-2021-PF-01).
Project Number: 101068203.
Project Period: 2022-2025.
Views and opinions expressed throughout this research project are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA) as granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Contact
PI Dr. Rodrigo Vallejo
Centre for Private Governance, Faculty of Law
University of Copenhagen
South Campus, Building: 6B-3-25
Karen Blixens Plads 16
DK-2300 Copenhagen S
Phone: (45) 35 32 96 89
E-mail: Rodrigo.Vallejo@jur.ku.dk
Supervisor Prof. Dr. Vibe Ufbeck
Centre for Private Governance, Faculty of Law
University of Copenhagen
South Campus, Building: 6B.3.64
Karen Blixens Plads 16
DK-2300 Copenhagen S
Phone: (45) 35 32 31 48
E-mail: Vibe.Ulfbeck@jur.ku.dk