The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century
The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century by John Kay is one of 2026's most credible books, appearing on 1 of the year's most respected lists, including Financial Times, for a Consensus Score of 16 out of 100.
Appears on these lists
Our take
AI-draftedKay's target is the shareholder-value doctrine itself, and he uses the collapse of once-dominant firms like GE and Deutsche Bank as evidence that optimizing for short-term earnings actively destroys the long-term capacity those companies were built on. It's a history of corporate form as much as a critique of financial theory, tracing how the modern company diverged from what its earliest architects intended it to do. The book is clearest when Kay is diagnosing what went wrong with specific firms and vaguer when sketching what should replace shareholder primacy — the critique lands harder than the alternative.
In the press
“Brilliantly erudite.”
Financial Times“A lively discussion of what companies are, and what they are for”
The Economist
How the Consensus Score is calculated
Our Consensus Score is our own transparent editorial metric — not a user rating. It weighs each list by the credibility of its source, how recent the listing is, and any award status. Here is the full breakdown.
| Source | Authority | Recency | Award | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Financial Times | 0.93 | 0.70 | 1.10× | 0.72 |
| Weighted sum → Score | 0.72 → 16 | |||
Similar consensus books
Because they appear on some of the same lists.
Frequently asked
What lists is The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century on?
The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century appears on 1 list in our 2026 corpus, including Financial Times.
What is its Consensus Score?
The Corporation in the Twenty-First Century has a Consensus Score of 16 out of 100, our transparent editorial measure of how many credible lists agree on it.