Ginger quoted Gary
> Corporations exist to make a profit, add value to society and to
provide jobs.
and Charles Parry
>is not the fundamental basis of a Corporation the
formal, legally sanctioned, avoidance of personal liability?
then posed
>the disconnect between one person's understanding of the corporation as a
profit-making, value- adding employer and another person's view of the
corporation as a structure within which individuals can avoid
responsibility
It recalled for me Tom Lloyd's 1990 book [which may not have been served
by a title 'The Nice Company'. Tom states 'we will not understand
corporations until we see them for what they are; a truly alien species,
the first our own species has encountered'.
It is easy to get dismissive about that perspective. It is way outside
most mental models of we have about our companies. But, if you play in it
you may find a perspective on a corporation that says that the corporation
'has' its managemement as much as its managed. The corporation competes in
the world for its own survival which may or may not be aligned with the
good of society, employees, stockholders or stakeholders. We may find
comfort in thinking that an organization 'should' be >response-able> but
why should it? Take Tom's view [and I choose to sympathise with it] and it
is a bit like asking the AIDS virus to be response-able.
So how do we create societies in which it is in the interests of the
phylum Corporation to act in our interest as well as its own?
-- If Price The Harrow Partnership Pewley Fort Guildford UK pewleyfort@eworld.comLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>