What’s the secret? The very existence of corporations depends on the government giving and protecting property rights. The bigger mistake? We have acted as though corporations belonged solely to their owners rather than to the civic systems of provision that gives them sources and resources to make provisions for all of us. It’s time to tell and secret and to correct the mistake.
The conversation about the role of corporations in electoral politics (the Vermont proposal for a Constitutional Amendment that denies the status of “person” to corporations is a recent example) has largely focused on what corporations are not (not persons and not citizens) as a way of getting then out of electoral politics. One can also talk about where they belong by looking at what they are. In Civilizing the Economy, I list four key aspects of corporations.
Marvin T. Brown, Ph.D teaches business and organizational ethics at the University of San Francisco and Saybrook University in San Francisco.
This book is the culmination of 30 years of teaching and writing on business and society from a communicative perspective. Visit workingethics.com for more information.
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