Ian Dickson on Fri, 23 Jan 2004 07:47:44 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> MAX (corporation sidebar) |
In message <200401192052.i0JKq8J05631@bbs.thing.net>, Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> writes >MAX > >the purpose of a corporation is to maximize profits for its officers. Really? There are normally two schools of thought, (which are not mutually exclusive):- 1) The purpose of a corporation is to maximise the profit for it's shareholders (and the conflict between shareholders and their agents, typically the officers) has been understood since the days of Adam Smith. Recent scandals have shown that this divergence of interests between owners and agents is still with us. 2) To maximise the income of the workforce. This sounds odd, but in essence the argument is that for most people their maximum income is obtained by working for an organisation because this removes the friction costs of seeking revenue. Evidence that this is true can be seen in the cycle of the corporation over the past few centuries. Initially they were very small, because people didn't need an intermediary. Then in the first round of globalization (Victorian period) they grew because while distant markets could be reached, they were expensive and needed economies of scale. Now that communications have improved corporations are, generally, shrinking down to their core competencies. -- ian dickson www.commkit.com phone +44 (0) 1452 862637 fax +44 (0) 1452 862670 PO Box 240, Gloucester, GL3 4YE, England "for building communities that work" # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net