THE CORPORATION

A\ The key points
• A “family”, a “monster”, a “paradox”, a “person”
Corporations were originally small groups of people working together to achieve a specific objective serving the public good. Modern corporations were born the day productivity became the principal objective during the industrial age.
While in front of the law, a corporation is just a “legal person”, it is at the same time a wonderful family working together and dangerous monster becoming out of control.
• When solutions become issues
While in the first place always trying to increase productivity and profit seems to be a positive challenge, in reality something else is happening at the same time.
Side effects appear. Too much outsourcing is generating working children paid ridiculous amounts of money. Science progress, synthetics chemicals are now seen as bad because it is creating pollution, pain for animals, etc.
“Time is money” has never been so true.
• Who’s responsible? Where’s the boundary?
Things have just gone too big to see the whole picture. Nobody thinks about connecting the dots between what they are doing and the final consequences. Some CEOs don’t even know what’s going on in their own company.
Back in the days, corporations were just created in order to serve the public good. Nowadays, there’s only this pathological pursuit of profit remaining. As a consequence, traditions, morals and boundaries disappear in front of competition, money and power.
• Advertising & Ethics
As the boundaries fade out, marketing and branding became a major part of the corporation’s investments. Advertisers do not hesitate to manipulate children in order to sell more. Companies also use advertising to cover their mistakes and make people think they are eco-friendly.
Ethics and morals are old values that are not considered anymore in decisions making of modern corporations. Everything has a price: manipulation, people silence, lies, disasters…
The corporations can go