Corporate Personhood and Fiduciary Duties as Critical Constructs in Developing Stakeholder Management Theory and Corporate Purpose.

This article examines the concept of corporate personhood as a foundational framework for understanding economic value creation in joint production, contrasting it with the dominant "nexus of contracts" view that treats corporations merely as contractual aggregations of self-interested parties. Corporate personhood, recognized legally as the corporation's status as a separate legal entity, supports stewardship, stakeholder management, and fiduciary duties through a governance structure led by a board of directors acting as disinterested trustees for the corporation as a whole. This approach emphasizes the corporation's role in fostering cooperation, firm-specific investments, and long-term institutional stability by mediating stakeholder interests and reducing rent seeking, thereby enabling joint value creation beyond minimizing agency costs. The article argues that corporate personhood provides a richer, multidimensional understanding of corporate governance and purpose, integrating legal, economic, and organizational perspectives to better reflect the corporation's social and economic functions.