A short history of the corporation

Your specific assignment...build a group internal decision-making structure

1. Finalize your goals : (a) Identify and test procedures that help to recognize actions of your group’s members as group actions. (b) Identify and distribute the roles that individuals are playing in your group. (c) Discuss how you have organized your group to tackle assignments. How do you synthesize and subordinate individual actions and decisions into group actions and decisions?
2. Draw a picture of your group’s GID/CID Structure : Organize it as a flow chart that describes the progression from a class assignment to the final group product.
3. How does your group collect disseminated knowledge and skill from your individual members?
4. What is the greatest challenge you have faced so far? : How did your group respond? Was it effective, successful, or satisfactory?
5. Changes . Have you kept your goals and procedures “in tact” as you have faced these?

What did you learn?

Peter French speculates on the possibility that a corporation could consist of nothing more than a sophisticated software program. He also holds forth the notion of corporate moral personhood (as opposed to natural personhood). Now that you have had an opportunity to study the history of and structure of the modern corporation, what do you think about the nature of corporations?

Appendix

Bibliography

1. Stone, C. D. (1975) Where the Law Ends: The Social Control of Corporate Behavior . Prospectr Heights, IL: Waveland Press, INC: 1-30.
2. Sandel, M. (1982). Liberalism and the Limits of Justice . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3. Des Jardins, J.R. (1993) Environmental Ethics: An Introduction to Environmental Philosophy . Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company: 37.
4. Clarke, T. (2004) "Introduction: Theories of Governance--Reconceptualizing Corporate Governance Theory After the Enron Experience," in Theories of Corporate Governance: The Philosophical Foundations of Corporate Governance , ed. Thomas Clarke. New York: Routledge: 1-30.
5. French, P.A. (1984) Collective and Corporate Responsibility . New York: Columbia University Press..
6. French, P.A. (1997) "Corporate Moral Agency" in Werhane, P.H., and Freeman, R.E. Blackwell Encyclopedic Dictionary of Business Ethics . Oxford, UK: Blackwell: 148-151.
7. May, L. (1987) The Morality of Groups: Collective Responsibility, Group-Based Harm, and Corporate Rights . Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
8. Werhane, P. H. (2008) "Mental Models: Moral Imagination and System Thinking in the Age of Globalization," in Journal of Business Ethics , 78: 463--474.
9. Werhane, P. (2007) "Corporate Social Responsibility/Corporate Moral Responsibility: Is There a Difference and the Difference It Makes," in eds., May, S., Cheney, G., and Roper, J., The Debate over Corporate Social Responsibility . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press: 459-474.
10. Fisse, B. and French, P.A., eds. (1985) Corrigible Corporations and Unruly Law . San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press.
11. Nader, R. and Green, M.J., eds. (1973) Corporate Power in America . New York: Grossman.
12. Nader,, R. Green, M. and Seligman, J. (1976) Taming the Giant Corporation . New York: Norton.
13. Davis, M. (1998) Thinking Like an Engineer: Studies in the Ethics of a Profession . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press: 119-156.
14. Jackall, R. (1988) Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
15. Carol, A. B., "Social Responsibility," in Werhane, P., and Freeman, R. E., eds. (1997, 1998) Blackwell Encyclopedic Dictionary of Business Ethics . Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, INC: 593-595.
16. Dyrud, M.A. (2007) "Ethics, Gaming, and Industrial Training," in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine . Winter 2007: 36-44.
17. Ritz, Dean. (2007) "Can Corporate Personhood Be Socially Responsible?" in eds. May, S., Cheney, G., and Roper, J., Corporate Governance . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press: 194-195.

Jeopardy for corporations

Pirates and corporations

Eac toolkit project

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