A corporation is an economic and legal institution that establishes a business enterprise as a distinct legal entity separate from its owners, capable of owning property, entering contracts, and bearing legal liability in its own name, typically limiting the personal financial liability of its shareholders to their investment. The corporate form traces its institutional origins to medieval guilds, chartered trading companies such as the British and Dutch East India Companies, and municipal corporations, evolving into the modern joint-stock corporation that underpins large-scale capitalist enterprise. As a social institution, the corporation has reshaped the organization of large-scale production, ownership and economic power, and remains a central subject of study in economic sociology and organizational theory.
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A cartel is an agreement among otherwise independent corporations to coordinate prices, output or market division rather than compete.
The chartered company was an early form of the modern business corporation, granted its legal personality and privileges directly by a sovereign charter.
Modern plutocracy is frequently analyzed in relation to the concentrated wealth and political influence of the corporation, the dominant institutional vehicle for accumulating large private fortunes.
The stock exchange is the institutional marketplace through which shares of the corporation, itself an institution of pooled and transferable ownership, are bought and sold.
Studied By
Source Wikipedia: Mark Mizruchi
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Wikipedia: Mark Mizruchi
Studied By: Mark Mizruchi, Article textQuote, Studied By: Mark Mizruchi, Article text
This line of research addresses a long-standing question about the nature of the corporation: who controls the corporation when ownership is widely dispersed among shareholders?
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