The Corporation

www.thecorporation.com

What are corporations doing with our world? This is a fascinating question, with so many responses that not even the amusing film called "The Corporation", can summarize; and all the answers aren't good nor bad. Corporations have made a lot for people, but at the time, as they seek for revenues to satisfy their stockholders, they have been using not so ethical things. These actors of international relations have been acting for one sole end, in what perojatively is called machiavelism: "profit maximization".

And though I do not believe that "the end justifies the means" is necessarily bad, I do believe that there are individual egocentric "ends" and collective community enhancing "ends". And at the same time, the end, I believe, cannot be achieved by a mean that will do less global good that the end itself. So, let me try to develop my thinking: a) if a company says that its ultimate goal is to maximize profits for only a small group of capitalists, the goal of this company is badly issued because it will serve all its stakeholders only as far as the profits are achieved; and in the same way the means, while the direct stockholders are not vulnerable to a bad action, will include everything, even lying, killing or doing any dirty action just to comply with the objective. b) if a company says that its end is to maximize stakeholder return (community wellfare, products that enhance life, environmental health, and others) but it uses any mean to accomplish it, even the final destruction of a religious community for example, then the means are not satisfying the end itself, and are even violating the final objective.

For instance, I have to items in consideration initially, a wrong "end" and a "mean" that doesn't comply with the "end" or that is doing more damage that the benefits entailed by the "end" itself. A corporation deals with many stakeholders, all of them contributing to the corporation because they assume that is better for them if it exists. If the corporation, then, is using all of its stakeholders to just satisfy an elite coinstrained circle, then this actoris attempting against itself. If we want to understand a corporation, the corporation isn't just about the stockholders, and for instance, profit maximization cannot be a goal nor an ultimate mean.

The mindset has to be changed, a corporation is like a state, and for instance it has to contribute with all that composes a part of it, from its external system (customers, suppliers, environment, government) to its internal system (employees and shareholders). If the corporations want to survive, then is time for a deep change in their organizational culture.

Bibliography

Achbar Mark, Abbott Jennifer, Bakan Joel (2004). The Corporation. The Corporation Webpage. Access 06/03/2011 Retrieved from http://www.thecorporation.com/index.cfm

Kline, John M. (2006). MNCs and Surrogate Sovereignty." Brown Journal of World Affairs 13, no. 1: 123-133

D'Amato, Gina (2011). Multinational Corporations Lecture. EAFIT University, Medellín Colombia.