The Nature Of Modern Corporations

The Idea of the corporation was born and chartered in the 16th century in Europe. The first endorsers of the long lasting project were. England and Holland.

In the book, The Corporation Joel Bakan presents arguments, that corporations are nothing but institutional pathological psychopaths that are “a dangerous possessor of the great power it wields over people and societies.” Their main responsibility is maximizing profit for their stockholders and ignoring the means to achieve this goal, portrays them as “psychopathic.” Bakan argues that, corporations are psychopaths, corporate social responsibility is illegal, and that corporations are able to manipulate anyone, even the government.

The documentary “The Corporation,” spoke about case histories of the expansion of a modern business corporation, comparing and criticizing them on their practices. It was referring on a diagnosis of the kind of personality that marks the corporations. Some of the externals that take effect are the harm to workers, harm to animals, harm to human health and harm to the biosphere. In the documentary they were stating a checklist of their personality diagnostic towards corporations. An example would be “incapacity to experience guilt, incapacity to keep up human relationship and lastly the failure to conform to social norms and respect the law.” Each of these external groups showed how affecting it was for them. The corporation could be easily related to the conflict theory.

Individuals who agree with the permissible always will claim that corporations are not the kinds of things that we can owe loyalty to. Proponents for being “permissible

Joel Bakan’s book, The Corporation: the Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, is a decisive look into the mind of the corporation, or big business. It outlines the importance of profit in business and how ruthless corporations are willing to be in order to bring in substantial revenue. The book uses a historical timeframe to portray the ruthlessness of business ever since the idea of the corporation arose in the 17th century. It provides an insight into a world of cheating, lying and stealing in order to advance in society; which is ultimately the goal Bakan was looking to reach. He provides many cases, examples and accounts which help the reader to understand the scheming which takes place and how

I have to say that this was a very intriguing video and makes you think. The message of the video appears to be that corporations are legal entity's created for the purpose of protecting the owners from liability. Also, a corporation has no integrity in nature, it has no capacity to form a conscience, as a result, freeing its owners from moral and/or ethical liability for its actions. The video reveals the obvious fact that the owners are obligated by stockholders to instruct the corporation to make as much money as legally possible, taking advantage of, if need be, the laws and labor forces within foreign nations that can provide a product at a cost that will produce the kind of profit desired. Wal-Mart, for example, seeks price and will

In the work place today records show a study of unethical behaviors taking place in the area of professional organizations. This has been a growing problem among a different variety of businesses and corporations. The problem with these issues being brought to the public is that it brings a negative outlook on the company as a whole. The words “crook” and “fraud” have been slanted towards some of our countries fortune five hundred companies and most respected business partners in the market. There are many reasons as to why these fraudulent acts are now relevant to the Medias eye, but none of them are helping these businesses reputation of leadership within corporations. Issues such as Improper handling of funds /theft, mistreatment of

In the film The Corporation it shows many examples of corporation taking advantages of various things as if it was psychopath destroying everything in its path. The Corporation we can see corporations building up countries by creating sweatshops, but once the communities becomes more stable and higher wages are being demanded, corporations than can leave the country to find poorer and a cheaper workforce. This creates a devastating effect to the workers increasing unemployment and more poverty. Not only are corporations creating poverty, but they are causing pollution in the air and water. Even administration or ceo are not fully aware of all the actions that are being taking place. In every corporations their are good apples, but an overwhelming

The chapter one of Corporations and Citizen (Crane, A, Matten, D, & Moon, J. ,2008) is the introduction of the whole book. The authors have an assumption that it is becoming progressively possible that corporations not only have economic, legal and social roles but, also political role or significance. They assume corporations involves in politics much more than before and participated more in governmental and inter- governmental rule-making. Then, they turn to the concept of citizenship so as to fit these political views of corporations. They have set out their perspective on the core concept of citizenship and elaborated on the approach taken in the follow part of the book.

The primary doctrine of corporate personhood was introduced in 1886 in the case of Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad. This case, brought to the Supreme Court, involved the challenging of a California railroad tax, contingent on an insistence of the Fourteenth Amendment and the equal rights protection it includes. Corporate personhood applies to the ability of organizations to be distinguished, by law, as an individual which includes the particular protections, abilities and rights that all individuals are entitled to. The most useful rights these organizations benefit from are the capacity to sue or to be sued in a court of law and to be able to enter into agreements contractually. In other words, the individuals working for the

The documentary starts off with showing the development of the contemporary business corporation, from beginning as a legal entity to then having the entitlement of having most of the legal rights of a person. Since a corporation is said to be a “person”, the documentary then was assessing the corporation as a “personality” and showed viewers everything a corporation was doing wrong in harming a real

In the “Birth” segment, the film shows how the modern corporation began from the rise of the industrial revolution in the United Kingdom and slowly spread to America. The film shows the early concepts of a legal business corporation began as a government-chartered institution to assist in specific public projects with specific stipulations and liabilities. Influenced by corporate and banking lawyers, the U.S. Supreme Court came down with several controversial decisions expanding the personhood status of a corporation. In the “A Legal ‘Person’” segment, the film shows how American corporations are allowed to legal operate as a person, having rights to purchase other businesses and shield investors and its management from losses and sanctions by the corporations’ actions. Since the United States legal system concluded that a corporation should be legally considered a “person,” the producers chose to psychoanalyze this person and formulate a diagnosis based on their behavior in the corporate world. And this is the central point of this film: the modern corporation is diagnosed as a psychopath since it numerous actions are amoral, deceitful, incapable of guilt and failure to conform to social norms and respect the law (Achbar, 2003) By having personhood status, the American corporation was allowed to grow and take advantage of expanding their markets domestically and ultimately into

“Corporations perfectly reflect our demands. We are the corporations. If corporations are evil, then evil are us” (McKeen).

Milton (1970 presents the individual role of the corporate executive as being legally bound to maximize the profits of the corporation over any potential interference from society and/or the government. In the capitalist system, the importance of private property and individual ownership maintain the ethical necessity of corporate executive act only on the behalf of the corporation, especially in the context of the corporation as a its own type of “artificial person”:

The idea that morally dubious goals may be legitimate inside capitalism will be discussed in light of a tax avoidance case study. Apple, a multinational technology company, has avoided paying its fair amount of income tax for years. This paper will consider the structural embeddedness of Apple’s legitimised goal—the maximisation of profit—through the ‘Double Irish Dutch sandwich’ tax haven model. Durkheim’s theory of collective conscience was used in explaining the legitimisation of the company’s profits-driven goal, and how its amorality becomes apparent outside the economical sphere. This paper will also discuss the interconnected nature of the harm and benefits in the deal made between Ireland and Apple. The association between legitimations of Apple’s conduct and its socially challenging behaviour has been analysed to be ambiguous in the letter of the law. The conclusion will shed light on the morally grey area of a company’s responsibility to its shareholders versus the needs of the community.