Corporation
A traditional corporate entity is a collective of people joined together by articles of incorporation in pursuit of profit. Although it may be comprised of individual parts such as directors, officers, and shareholders, a corporation is a legal entity in and of itself. This was determined by Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railway in the U.S. Supreme court in 1886[1]. This precedent setting case was a dispute over a railway route and determined whether the U.S. Supreme Court identified a private corporation as a “natural person” under the U.S. Constitution and therefore entitled to protection under the Bill of Rights.
Behaviour
The prime driver of all corporate entities is self survival. The second is their fiduciary duty to pursue revenue for the financial gain of employees and shareholders. These paramount, binding principles give corporations a machine like quality which if it was a REAL person would meet the diagnostic criteria for being a psychopath[2].
Research has found people with narcissistic traits tend to get promoted 39% faster in their progression to CEO[3] and that there are at least three times as many psychopaths in executive or CEO roles than in the overall population[4] . The importance of this fact is emphasised by the knowledge that psychopaths, at around 1% of the adult population, are reported to be responsible for about 50 % of all serious crimes and constitute 20% of (North American) prison populations[5].
It is important to remember corporation are not humans and inherently do not have human characteristic, they are simply inert machines. Much like a gun, its behaviour is only defined by the intention behind it. Change the intention, change the effect. This bring the question as to whether we can write a series rules (tenets) which would then enable the creation of a good machine.
References
- ↑ U.S. Supreme Court (1886): Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U.S. 394. Decided: May 9, 1886. Accessed 6th Jan 2022 via https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/118/394/
- ↑ Bakan, Joel, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. New York: Free Press, 2004.
- ↑ The Leadership Quarterly: The perks of narcissism: Behaving like a star speeds up career advancement to the CEO position. Published June 2021, Accessed 14th January via https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2020.101489
- ↑ Corporate Psychopathy: Talking the Walk
- ↑ Hare, R. (1999). Without conscience: The disturbing word of the psychopaths among us. New York: Guildford Press.