21st Corporations
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Human Resource Management (HRM)
150 years ago, the business corporations was relatively insignificant institution. Today, it is all pervasive like the church, the monarchy,and the communist party and other times and places. The corporations today is a dominate institution.
Corporation is like a jigsaw in the society as a whole. If you remove it, the pictures incomplete but equally, if it's the only path, its not gonna work. The corporation is just like a family unit. People in the corporation work together just for common in. Like the telephone system, yet it reaches almost everywhere its extraordinarily powerful its pretty hard to avoid and its transforms the lives of the people. It balance for the betterment of the people. The eagle, soar, clear-eye, competitive, prepared to strike but not a vulture. Noble, avisionary majestic but the people can believe in and be inspired by that creates such a lift that is source.
Corporations are artifical creations. You might say there are monsters trying to devour as much as profit as possible at anyone's expense. Like a whale, big fish which can swallow you in an instant. The word corporate gets attached in almost a sense of agenda and one hears a lot about the corporate agenda as though it is an agenda which is trying to take over the world.
What is a Corporation? It is a group of invdividuals working together to serve a variety of objectives. The principle one of it is earning large, growing, sustain and legal returns for the people who own the business.
Birth of Corporation: The history of corporations goes back at least to the sixteenth century, and since then their essential nature has not greatly changed. Before corporations, debts were transgenerational, passed on to descendents, some of whom were placed in debtors' prisons to repay the monies. The early state-chartered corporations of Europe and England were established to sponsor exploration of the New World. Those who sailed forth from England to trade for spices in the East Indies took grave risks in the journey, and even graver ones should they lose their precious cargoes. If they did not sail under the charter of a state corporation, they and their families could be ruined for life if bad weather or piracy struck en route. By establishing the corporate form, limiting shareholders to liabilities no greater than their investment, Europeans were able to create a form of commerce that could absorb the hard knocks of trading and exploring, encouraging both risk-taking and speculative investment at the same time. Those early corporations negotiated their charters with the state, which outlined the terms of their rights as well as the monies that were to be repaid to the crown. As a social technology, this was a brilliant invention, releasing the vigor of enterprise in the world. The charter of limited liability distinguished a corporation from all other forms of enterprise, because it was (and is) actually a gift of the state„a grant, a covenant, a form of permission that citizens, through their government, delegate to the corporation and its shareholders. In the early years of the republic, the citizens of the United States were keen to prevent any institution, foreign or domestic, commercial or religious, from dominating or suppressing their newly won rights. Early corporation charters were carefully drafted by states to ensure this subordination. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were only a few hundred corporations in the United States, and many of these were chartered expressly to build canals, turnpikes, or other public infrastructure. Even then, citizens openly and persistently expressed concern that corporations with specific rights granted under charters would nevertheless become so powerful that they could take over newspapers, public opinion, elections and the judiciary. Workers had similar fears about their own status within these new corporations. Thus early state charters were detailed and restrictive. They specified limits on profits, the amounts of indebtedness allowed, the overall capitalization, and how much land a corporation could own. The power of large shareholders was limited by scaled voting, so that large and small investors had equal voting rights. Interlocking directorates were not allowed, and in the case of public works projects, corporations were allowed to retain their original investments with predetermined percentages of profit. When profit projections were reached, the project was turned over to the state. It was the commonly held opinion at that time that corporations were a "creature of the law and may be molded to any shape or for any purpose that the Legislature may deem most conducive for the general good." In many states, clauses of incorporation gave legislatures the right to annul or revoke a charter whenever they chose to, or after a certain period of time (often several decades). Some states even required public votes to continue certain charters.
Despite these efforts, legislatures inevitably began to lose their control over big business, state by state. Government corruption became particularly rampant after the Civil War, and with it came a loosening of laws regulating interlocking trusts, factory towns and sequestered private fortunes. Child labor flourished, along with Pinkerton and other private armies that kept protests in check, workers in line. The Civil War had transferred great amounts of wealth to corporations, and with this concentration of power they began to clamor for "equal rights" and new simplified chartering laws that would treat every corporation equally (This is the means of incorporation we have today: anyone can do it, and for a nominal fee.)
There quickly followed a wholesale reinterpretation of the Constitution by the judiciary, granting new powers and rights to corporations. The primary thrust behind these precedents was the "due process" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This amendment protected the rights of freed slaves, but it was subsequently interpreted to give corporations the same status before the law as that of a natural person. On that basis, judges reversed hundreds if not thousands of state laws controlling wages, working conditions, ownership and corporate tenure.
In the wake of those decisions, American business was transformed. Unions could be interpreted as "civil conspiracies" and could be enjoined from striking. With the reduction of state power, incentives were reversed and states such as Deleware began attracting business by having the simplest and most lax incorporation procedures and regulations, driving other states to compete by lowering their own standards. The marriage of business and government also undermined„turned upside down, in fact„the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment, guaranting the right of every citizen to engage in free speech, was established to encourage, promote, and preserve democratic traditions. In the late 1700s there were very few ways to communicate except through speech: flyers, books, pamphlets, and broadsides from every conceivable quadrant of the political spectrum. The Founding Fathers wisely understood that the suppression of these political expressions would inevitably lead to tyranny of one sort or another; they did not want any one voice to have sway or dominance over the public discourse. There was little concern at that time that among the voices clamoring to be heard would be that of commerce... and the founders of the American republic still had no concept of the multinational corporation.
By invoking the First Amendment privilege to protect "speech," corporations achieve precisely what the Bill of Rights was intended to prevent: domination of public thought and discourse. Although corporations profess that they are legitimately expressing their democratic rights in their attempt to influence the government, their argument presupposes that all parties, from the single voter to the multinational company, have an equal voice in the political debates surrounding important issues.
Modern Corporations and Multinationals (21st Century): A corporation is a business that is legally independent from its members. Corporations may incur or pay debt, negotiate contracts, sue and be sued. Corporations range in size from local retail stores to a nation's largest corporation. These larger corporations sell stocks to shareholders, and the shareholders legally own the company. Management of the company remains separate from, but accountable to, the ownership. The shareholders are organized with a board of directors who hold regular meetings and make decisions on broad policies governing the corporation. Although many Americans own stock, they normally do not participate in regular board meetings or exert significant control over corporate decisions.
Sometimes corporations with closely related business may share board members, which is called an interlocking directorate. In this arrangement a manufacturer, a financial services company, and an insurance company with shared business also share the same board members. These few individuals, then, exert power over multiple companies whose business is interdependent.
According to a common online encyclopedia, conglomerate is a corporation made up of many smaller companies, or subsidiaries, that may or may not have related business interests. The buying and selling of corporations for profit—rather than for the service or products they provide—form conglomerates. The process of corporate merger often leads to large layoffs because, as companies combine forces, many jobs are duplicated in the other company. For example, a conglomerate may take over a smaller company, including that company's marketing department. The conglomerate will already have a marketing department capable of handling most of the new acquisition's needs. Therefore, as many as half or all of the acquired marketing department employees would lose their jobs. The same situation often occurs when two corporations of a similar size merge.
Other types of corporations include monopolies, oligopolies, and multinationals. Monopolies occur when a single company accounts for all or nearly all sales of a product or service in a market. Monopolies are illegal in the United States because they eliminate competition and can fix prices, which hurts consumers. In other words, monopolies interfere with capitalism. The Philippine government does not allow monopolies but U.S. government does consider some monopolies legal, however, such as utilities where competition would be difficult to implement without distressing other social systems. But even utility monopolies have seen increased competition in recent years. Recently electric power companies have seen deregulation and increased competition in some regions as well.
Oligopolies exist when several corporations have a monopoly in a market. The classic example of an oligopoly would be American auto makers until the 1980s. Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors manufactured nearly all vehicles built in America. As globalization has increased, so has competition, and few oligopolies exist today.
Multinationals are corporations that conduct business in many different countries. These corporations produce more goods and wealth than many smaller countries. Their existence, though, remains controversial. They garner success by entering less-developed nations, bringing industry into these markets with cheaper labor, and then exporting those goods to more-developed countries. Business advocates point to the higher standard of living in most countries where multinationals have entered the economy. Critics charge that multinationals exploit poor workers and natural resources, creating environmental havoc.
Sources: http://www.mecgrassroots.org/NEWSL/ISS19/20CorpBirth.html
http://thecorporation.com/
Corporation is like a jigsaw in the society as a whole. If you remove it, the pictures incomplete but equally, if it's the only path, its not gonna work. The corporation is just like a family unit. People in the corporation work together just for common in. Like the telephone system, yet it reaches almost everywhere its extraordinarily powerful its pretty hard to avoid and its transforms the lives of the people. It balance for the betterment of the people. The eagle, soar, clear-eye, competitive, prepared to strike but not a vulture. Noble, avisionary majestic but the people can believe in and be inspired by that creates such a lift that is source.
Corporations are artifical creations. You might say there are monsters trying to devour as much as profit as possible at anyone's expense. Like a whale, big fish which can swallow you in an instant. The word corporate gets attached in almost a sense of agenda and one hears a lot about the corporate agenda as though it is an agenda which is trying to take over the world.
What is a Corporation? It is a group of invdividuals working together to serve a variety of objectives. The principle one of it is earning large, growing, sustain and legal returns for the people who own the business.
Birth of Corporation: The history of corporations goes back at least to the sixteenth century, and since then their essential nature has not greatly changed. Before corporations, debts were transgenerational, passed on to descendents, some of whom were placed in debtors' prisons to repay the monies. The early state-chartered corporations of Europe and England were established to sponsor exploration of the New World. Those who sailed forth from England to trade for spices in the East Indies took grave risks in the journey, and even graver ones should they lose their precious cargoes. If they did not sail under the charter of a state corporation, they and their families could be ruined for life if bad weather or piracy struck en route. By establishing the corporate form, limiting shareholders to liabilities no greater than their investment, Europeans were able to create a form of commerce that could absorb the hard knocks of trading and exploring, encouraging both risk-taking and speculative investment at the same time. Those early corporations negotiated their charters with the state, which outlined the terms of their rights as well as the monies that were to be repaid to the crown. As a social technology, this was a brilliant invention, releasing the vigor of enterprise in the world. The charter of limited liability distinguished a corporation from all other forms of enterprise, because it was (and is) actually a gift of the state„a grant, a covenant, a form of permission that citizens, through their government, delegate to the corporation and its shareholders. In the early years of the republic, the citizens of the United States were keen to prevent any institution, foreign or domestic, commercial or religious, from dominating or suppressing their newly won rights. Early corporation charters were carefully drafted by states to ensure this subordination. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were only a few hundred corporations in the United States, and many of these were chartered expressly to build canals, turnpikes, or other public infrastructure. Even then, citizens openly and persistently expressed concern that corporations with specific rights granted under charters would nevertheless become so powerful that they could take over newspapers, public opinion, elections and the judiciary. Workers had similar fears about their own status within these new corporations. Thus early state charters were detailed and restrictive. They specified limits on profits, the amounts of indebtedness allowed, the overall capitalization, and how much land a corporation could own. The power of large shareholders was limited by scaled voting, so that large and small investors had equal voting rights. Interlocking directorates were not allowed, and in the case of public works projects, corporations were allowed to retain their original investments with predetermined percentages of profit. When profit projections were reached, the project was turned over to the state. It was the commonly held opinion at that time that corporations were a "creature of the law and may be molded to any shape or for any purpose that the Legislature may deem most conducive for the general good." In many states, clauses of incorporation gave legislatures the right to annul or revoke a charter whenever they chose to, or after a certain period of time (often several decades). Some states even required public votes to continue certain charters.
Despite these efforts, legislatures inevitably began to lose their control over big business, state by state. Government corruption became particularly rampant after the Civil War, and with it came a loosening of laws regulating interlocking trusts, factory towns and sequestered private fortunes. Child labor flourished, along with Pinkerton and other private armies that kept protests in check, workers in line. The Civil War had transferred great amounts of wealth to corporations, and with this concentration of power they began to clamor for "equal rights" and new simplified chartering laws that would treat every corporation equally (This is the means of incorporation we have today: anyone can do it, and for a nominal fee.)
There quickly followed a wholesale reinterpretation of the Constitution by the judiciary, granting new powers and rights to corporations. The primary thrust behind these precedents was the "due process" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This amendment protected the rights of freed slaves, but it was subsequently interpreted to give corporations the same status before the law as that of a natural person. On that basis, judges reversed hundreds if not thousands of state laws controlling wages, working conditions, ownership and corporate tenure.
In the wake of those decisions, American business was transformed. Unions could be interpreted as "civil conspiracies" and could be enjoined from striking. With the reduction of state power, incentives were reversed and states such as Deleware began attracting business by having the simplest and most lax incorporation procedures and regulations, driving other states to compete by lowering their own standards. The marriage of business and government also undermined„turned upside down, in fact„the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment, guaranting the right of every citizen to engage in free speech, was established to encourage, promote, and preserve democratic traditions. In the late 1700s there were very few ways to communicate except through speech: flyers, books, pamphlets, and broadsides from every conceivable quadrant of the political spectrum. The Founding Fathers wisely understood that the suppression of these political expressions would inevitably lead to tyranny of one sort or another; they did not want any one voice to have sway or dominance over the public discourse. There was little concern at that time that among the voices clamoring to be heard would be that of commerce... and the founders of the American republic still had no concept of the multinational corporation.
By invoking the First Amendment privilege to protect "speech," corporations achieve precisely what the Bill of Rights was intended to prevent: domination of public thought and discourse. Although corporations profess that they are legitimately expressing their democratic rights in their attempt to influence the government, their argument presupposes that all parties, from the single voter to the multinational company, have an equal voice in the political debates surrounding important issues.
Modern Corporations and Multinationals (21st Century): A corporation is a business that is legally independent from its members. Corporations may incur or pay debt, negotiate contracts, sue and be sued. Corporations range in size from local retail stores to a nation's largest corporation. These larger corporations sell stocks to shareholders, and the shareholders legally own the company. Management of the company remains separate from, but accountable to, the ownership. The shareholders are organized with a board of directors who hold regular meetings and make decisions on broad policies governing the corporation. Although many Americans own stock, they normally do not participate in regular board meetings or exert significant control over corporate decisions.
Sometimes corporations with closely related business may share board members, which is called an interlocking directorate. In this arrangement a manufacturer, a financial services company, and an insurance company with shared business also share the same board members. These few individuals, then, exert power over multiple companies whose business is interdependent.
According to a common online encyclopedia, conglomerate is a corporation made up of many smaller companies, or subsidiaries, that may or may not have related business interests. The buying and selling of corporations for profit—rather than for the service or products they provide—form conglomerates. The process of corporate merger often leads to large layoffs because, as companies combine forces, many jobs are duplicated in the other company. For example, a conglomerate may take over a smaller company, including that company's marketing department. The conglomerate will already have a marketing department capable of handling most of the new acquisition's needs. Therefore, as many as half or all of the acquired marketing department employees would lose their jobs. The same situation often occurs when two corporations of a similar size merge.
Other types of corporations include monopolies, oligopolies, and multinationals. Monopolies occur when a single company accounts for all or nearly all sales of a product or service in a market. Monopolies are illegal in the United States because they eliminate competition and can fix prices, which hurts consumers. In other words, monopolies interfere with capitalism. The Philippine government does not allow monopolies but U.S. government does consider some monopolies legal, however, such as utilities where competition would be difficult to implement without distressing other social systems. But even utility monopolies have seen increased competition in recent years. Recently electric power companies have seen deregulation and increased competition in some regions as well.
Oligopolies exist when several corporations have a monopoly in a market. The classic example of an oligopoly would be American auto makers until the 1980s. Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors manufactured nearly all vehicles built in America. As globalization has increased, so has competition, and few oligopolies exist today.
Multinationals are corporations that conduct business in many different countries. These corporations produce more goods and wealth than many smaller countries. Their existence, though, remains controversial. They garner success by entering less-developed nations, bringing industry into these markets with cheaper labor, and then exporting those goods to more-developed countries. Business advocates point to the higher standard of living in most countries where multinationals have entered the economy. Critics charge that multinationals exploit poor workers and natural resources, creating environmental havoc.
Sources: http://www.mecgrassroots.org/NEWSL/ISS19/20CorpBirth.html
http://thecorporation.com/
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