A Corporação - Capítulo 1 de 16

150 years ago the business Corporation was a relatively insignificant institution today it is all pervasive like the church the monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places the corporation is today's dominant institution this documentary examines the nature Evolution imp s and possible futures of the modern business Corporation initially given a narrow legal mandate what has allowed today's Corporation to achieve such extraordinary power and influence over our lives We Begin our inquiry as scandals threatened to trigger a wide debate about the lack of public control over big corporations I do think there is um

an overhang uh over the market of distrust listen 95% or some percent huge percentage of the business Community are honest and uh reveal all their assets and got compensation programs that are balanced and but there are some bad acts the media debate about the basic operating principles of the corporate world was quickly reduced to a game a Follow the Leader I still happen to think the United States is the greatest place in the world to invest we have some shakeups that are going on because of a few bad apples some people call me a bad

I well I may be bruised but I still taste sweet some people call me a bad but mayest on the these are not just a bunch of bad apples this is just a few bad apples it's not just a few bad apples we've got to get rid of the bad bad apples you can start with Tao bad apples we know all about Worldcom bad apples Xerox Corporation bad app arur Anderson bad apples Enron obviously bad apples Kmart Corporation the fruit cart is getting a little more full I don't think it's just a few apples unfortunately

I think this is the worst crisis of confidence in uh business what's wrong with this picture can't we pick a better metaphor to describe the dominant institution of our time through the voices of CEOs whistleblowers Brokers gurus and spies insiders and Outsiders we present the corporation as a paradox an institution that creates great wealth but causes enormous and often hidden Harms I see the corporation as part of a jigsaw in society as a whole which if you remove it the picture's incomplete but equally if it's the only path it's not going to work a sports

team some of us are blocking and tackling some of us are running the ball some of us are throwing the ball but we all have a common purpose which is to succeed as an organization a corporation is like a family unit people in a corporation work together for a common end like the telephone system it reaches almost everywhere it's extraordinarily powerful it's pretty hard to avoid and it transforms the lives of people I think on balance for the better the eagle soaring cleare eyed competitive prepared to strike but not a vulture Noble uh Visionary Majestic

that people can believe in and be inspired by that creates such a lift that it Soares I could see that being a good logo for the principled company well okay guys enough operations are artificial Creations you might say they're monsters trying to devour as much profit as possible uh at anyone's expense I think of a whale gentle Big Fish which could swallow you in an instant Dr Frankenstein's creation has overwhelmed and overpowered him as the corporate form has done with us the word corporate gets attached in in almost you know in a pejorative sense to

and gets married with the word agenda and one hears a lot about the corporate agenda as though it is evil as though it is an agenda which is trying to take over the world personally I don't use the word Corporation I use the word business I will use the word use the word uh uh company I'll use the words business Community because I think that is a much fairer representation than zeroing in on just this word Corporation what is a corporation it's funny that I've taught in a business school for as long as I have

without ever having been asked uh so so pointedly to say what I think a corporation is it is one form of business ownership it's a group of individuals working together to serve a variety of objectives the principal one of which is earning large growing sustained legal returns for the people who own the business the modern Corporation has grown out of the Industrial Age the Industrial Age began in 1712 when an Englishman named Thomas newcoming invented a steam driven pump to pump water out of the English coal minees so the English coal miners could get it

more cold to mine rather than hauling buckets of water out of the M it was all about productivity more Cal per man hour that was the dawn of the Industrial Age and then it became more steel per man hour more textiles per manh hour more automobiles per man hour and today it's more chips per manh hour more gizmos per manh hour the system is basically the same producing more sophisticated products today the dominant role of corporations in our lives is essentially a product of the roughly the past Century corporations were originally associations of people who

were chartered by a state to perform some particular function like a group of people want to build a bridge over the Charles River or something like that there were very few chartered corporations in early United States history and the ones that existed had clear stipulations in their state issued Charters how long they could operate the amount of capitalization uh what they made or did or maintained a Turnpike or whatever was in their Charter and they didn't do anything else they didn't own or couldn't own another corporation uh their shareholders were liable and so on in

both law and the culture the corporation was considered a subordinate entity that was a gift from the people in order to serve the public good so you have that history and we shouldn't be misled by it it's not as if those were the houseon days when all corporations served the public trust but there's a lot to learn from that the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution created enormous growth in corporations and so there was an explosion of railroads who got large Federal subsidies of land banking heavy manufacturing and corporate lawyers a century and a half

ago realized they need