The corporation book download

Suddenly, they were vulnerable to popular discontent and organized dissent especially from a growing labor movement , as calls for more government regulation and even their dismantling were increasingly common. Business leaders and public relations experts soon realized that the institution's new powers and privileges demanded new public relations strategies. Not merely to be consciously dependent upon it -- not merely regard it as a necessity -- not merely to take it for granted -- but to love it -- to hold real affection for it.

Employees, particularly telephone operators and linemen, appeared regularly in the company's advertisements, as did shareholders. General Motors, for example, ran advertisements that, in the words of the agency responsible for them, aimed "to personalize the institution by calling it a family. This is our picture of General Motors -- a big congenial household. As citizens demanded that governments rein in corporate power and while labor militancy was rife, with returning World War I veterans, having risked their lives as soldiers, insisting upon better treatment as workers, proponents of the New Capitalism sought to demonstrate that corporations could be good without the coercive push of governments and unions.

A leader of the movement, Paul W. Litchfield, who presided over Goodyear Tire for thirty-two years through the middle part of the twentieth century, believed capitalism would not survive unless equality and cooperation between workers and capitalists replaced division and conflict. Though branded a socialist and a Marxist by some of his business peers at the time, Litchfield forged ahead with programs designed to promote the health, welfare, and education of his workers and their families, and to give his workers a greater voice in company affairs.

One of his proudest achievements was a workers' Senate and House of Representatives, modeled after the national one, that had jurisdiction over employment issues, including wages. Litchfield defended his benevolent policies as necessary for Goodyear's success. Many people believed at the time that corporate greed and mismanagement had caused the Great Depression.

They shared Justice Louis Brandeis's view, stated in a Supreme Court judgment, that corporations were "Frankenstein monsters" capable of doing evil. In response, business leaders embraced corporate social responsibility. It was the best strategy, they believed, to restore people's faith in corporations and reverse their growing fascination with big government. Gerard Swope, then president of General Electric, voiced a popular sentiment among big-business leaders when, in , he said that "organized industry should take the lead, recognizing its responsibility to its employees, to the public, and to its shareholders rather than that democratic society should act through its government" italics added.

The corporation, they argued, was "potentially if not yet actually the dominant institution of the modern world"; its managers had become "princes of industry," their companies akin to feudal fiefdoms.

Because they had amassed such power over society, corporations and the men who managed them were now obliged to serve the interests of society as a whole, much as governments were, not just those of their shareholders. Roosevelt created the New Deal, a package of regulatory reforms designed to restore economic health by, among other things, curbing the powers and freedoms of corporations.

As the first systematic attempt to regulate corporations and the foundation of the modern regulatory state, the New Deal was reviled by many business leaders at the time and even prompted a small group of them to plot a coup to overthrow Roosevelt's administration. Though the plot which is more fully discussed in Chapter 4, as is the New Deal itself failed, it was significant for reflecting the depth of hostility many business leaders felt for Roosevelt.

The spirit of the New Deal, along with many of its regulatory regimes, nonetheless prevailed. For fifty years following its creation, through World War II, the postwar era, and the s and s, the growing power of corporations was offset, at least in part, by continued expansion of government regulation, trade unions, and social programs.

Then, much as steam engines and railways had combined with new laws and ideologies to create the corporate behemoth one hundred years earlier, a new convergence of technology, law, and ideology -- economic globalization -- reversed the trend toward greater regulatory control of corporations and vaulted the corporation to unprecedented power and influence.

In , the economy was shaken by a surge in oil prices due to the formation of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC , which operated in cartel-like fashion to control the world's oil supply. High unemployment, runaway inflation, and deep recession soon followed. Prevailing economic policies, which, true to their New Deal lineage, had favored regulation and other modes of government intervention, came under sustained attack for their inability to deal with the crisis.

Governments throughout the West began to embrace neoliberalism, which, like its laissez-faire predecessor, celebrated economic freedom for individuals and corporations and prescribed a limited role for government in the economy. When Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of Britain in , and then Ronald Reagan president of the United States in , it was clear that the economic era inspired by New Deal ideas and policies had come to an end.

Over the next two decades, governments pursued neoliberalism's core policies of deregulation, privatization, spending cuts, and inflation reduction with increasing vigor. By the early s, neoliberalism had become an economic orthodoxy. In the meantime, technological innovations in transportation and communications had profoundly enhanced corporations' mobility and portability. Fast and large jet planes and new container-shipping techniques which allowed for sea shipping to be smoothly integrated with rail and truck networks drove down the costs and increased the speed and efficiency of transportation.

Communications were similarly improved with innovations to long-distance phone networks, telex and fax technology, and, more recently, the creation of the Internet. Corporations, no longer tethered to their home jurisdictions, could now scour the earth for locations to produce goods and services at substantially lower costs.

They could buy labor in poor countries, where it was cheap and where environmental standards were weak, and sell their products in wealthy countries, where people had disposable income and were prepared to pay decent prices for them.

Costly tariffs had gradually come down since , when the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade GATT was introduced, enabling corporations to take advantage of their newfound mobility without suffering punishing financial penalties. By leveraging their freedom from the bonds of location, corporations could now dictate the economic policies of governments. As Clive Allen, a vice president at Nortel Networks, a leading Canadian high-tech company, explained, companies "owe no allegiance to Canada Just because we [Nortel Networks] were born there doesn't mean we'll remain there The place has to remain attractive for us to be interested in staying there.

A resulting "battle to the bottom" would see them ratchet down regulatory regimes -- particularly those that protected workers and the environment -- reduce taxes, and roll back social programs, often with reckless disregard for the consequences. With the creation of the World Trade Organization WTO in , the deregulatory logic of economic globalization was deepened.

Given a mandate to enforce existing GATT standards, and also to create new ones that would bar regulatory measures that might restrict the flow of international trade, the WTO was poised to become a significant fetter on the economic sovereignty of nations. By the time tens of thousands of people spilled into the streets of Seattle in to protest against a meeting of WTO officials and member-state representatives, the organization had evolved into a powerful, secretive, and corporate-influenced overseer of government's mandate to protect citizens and the environment from corporate harms.

When Enron collapsed and accounting firm Arthur Andersen's role in its misdeeds was revealed, people called for better regulatory oversight of the accounting industry. What few knew at the time, however, was that the U.

Driven by a stated belief that "regulations can be an unnecessary, and usually unintended, barrier to trade in services" and in response to intense lobbying from industry groups and firms, the WTO in the late s had established a set of "disciplines" designed to ensure that member states do not regulate accounting in ways that are "more trade restrictive than When the disciplines were first being considered, U. A final answer to the question must await a WTO ruling once the disciplines are officially operative, which likely will take the form of a tribunal's decision in a member-state's complaint against the Act.

But, in the meantime, the fact that the question even had to be asked demonstrates the discipline's potential impact on government's authority to regulate the accounting industry and hence "the people's" democratic sovereignty over it. Regulation of accounting is not unique as an area in which the WTO has the authority to restrict governments' policy choices.

On numerous occasions the organization has required nations, under threat of punishing penalties, to change or repeal laws designed to protect environmental, consumer, or other public interests. In one case, for example, a U. The full extent of the WTO's impact cannot be gauged from its formal decisions alone, however. As is true of any set of legal standards, WTO rules exert their strongest influence through informal channels.

Governments might self-censor their behavior to ensure that they comply with the rules -- as the State of Maryland did when it scuttled a proposed law that would have barred it from buying products from companies doing business in Nigeria while that country was under the rule of a cruel dictatorship after warnings from the U.

Governments can also use WTO standards to pressure other governments to change their policies, threatening to initiate a WTO complaint if they refuse to do so -- as the United States and Canada did to get the European Union to back off proposed regulations that would have banned the import of fur from animals caught in leg-hold traps and of cosmetics that had been tested on animals.

That the WTO's policies and decisions tend to champion corporations' interests is hardly surprising, given the privileged place and considerable influence industry groups enjoy within the organization. The trade and commerce ministers who represent the member states are usually "closely aligned with the commercial and financial interests of those in the advanced industrial countries," as Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz notes, and thus easy targets for corporations to influence.

Corporations and industry groups also enjoy close relationships with the organization's bureaucrats and officials. Over its relatively short life, the WTO has become a significant fetter on nations' abilities to protect their citizens from corporate misdeeds.

More generally, economic globalization, of which the WTO is just one element, has substantially enhanced corporations' abilities to evade the authority of governments. As is true of any ruling institution, the corporation now attracts mistrust, fear, and demands for accountability from an increasingly anxious public.

Today's corporate leaders understand, as did their predecessors, that work is needed to regain and maintain the public's trust.

And they, like their predecessors, are seeking to soften the corporation's image by presenting it as human, benevolent, and socially responsible. If you walked down the street with a microphone and a camera and you stopped [people] on the street Corporations' brand identities are "personification[s]" of "who they are and where they've come from," says Clay Timon, chairman of Landor Associates, the world's largest and oldest branding firm.

Timon points to Landor's brand drivers for British Petroleum -- "progressive, performance, green, innovative" -- as evidence of how corporate environmental and social responsibility are emerging today as key branding themes. Hardcover in English - US Ed edition. Over the last years the corporation has risen from relative obscurity to become the world's dominant economic institution.

Classifications Library of Congress HD B Dewey First Sentence "Over the last years the corporation has risen from relative obscurity to become the world's dominant economic institution. B23 Community Reviews 0 Feedback? Lists containing this Book To borrow from GwendoPo. Loading Related Books. December 30, Edited by ImportBot. May 7, December 13, June 29, Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker.

Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses.

It appears your browser does not have it turned on. Please see your browser settings for this feature. EMBED for wordpress. Want more? Advanced embedding details, examples, and help! The Corporation is a Canadian documentary film critical of the modern-day corporation, considering it as a class of person and evaluating its behaviour towards society and the world at large as a psychologist might evaluate an ordinary person.

The Corporation official movie website. Contact Information www. I must admit I'm not totally surprised Reviewer: zythmer - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - February 1, Subject: Must see You're probably wondering which version you should download. They are not equivalent in terms of resolution.