The genius of the corporation as a business form, and the reason for its remarkable rise over the last three centuries , was - and is - its capacity to combine the capital, and thus the economic power, of unlimited numbers of people.
We need to confront honestly the issue of scale. . . You may need a large corporation to run an airline or to manufacture cars, but you don't need a large corporation to raise a chicken or a hog. You don't need a large corporation to process local food or local timber and market it locally.
A corporation has no soul.
the whole flavor and quality of the American representative government turns to ashes on the tongue, if one regards that government as simply an inferior and rather second-rate sort of corporation.
The manufacturing corporation, except in comparatively few instances, no longer represents a protecting care, a parental influence, over its operatives. It is too often a soulless organization; and its members forget that they are morally responsible for the souls and bodies, as well as for the wages, of those whose labor is the source of their wealth.
I know Microsoft, I know they were only doing things because they thought they were long-reaching and long-thinking. But the world we live in now is that we have to realise, especially if you're a big corporation, if you make one step wrong, the world will leap on you, and unfairly, very unfairly, they will judge you.
. . . it's always been difficult for us to lead an examined life as a corporation. I've always felt like a company has the responsibility to not wait for the government to tell it what to do, or to wait for the consumer to tell it what to do, but as soon as it finds out it's doing something wrong, stop doing it.
I believe that the mutual fund industry's biggest shortcoming is too much focus on the momentary price of a stock - an illusion - and too little focus on the intrinsic value of the corporation - the ultimate reality. I'm comforted by the fact that Warren Buffett feels the same way.
In my view, a corporation is not a person. A corporation does not have First Amendment rights to spend as much money as it wants, without disclosure, on a political campaign.
Some blame the drug companies. I don't. They are corporations. Their managers are ordered by law to make money for the corporation. They push a certain patent policy not because of ideals,but because it is the policy that makes them the most money. And it only makes them the most money because of a certain corruption within our political system-a corruption the drug companies are certainly not responsible for. The corruption is our own politicians' failure of integrity.
I still do not understand how a corporation can have person-hood if it has no soul and never dies.
Corporations did not achieve the scale we normally associate with them until the 1880s; but it's still hard to imagine that Abraham Lincoln would offered much in the way of determined opposition. William Herndon said that they always thanked the Lord when a corporation came knocking at their office door to hire them.
. . . one of hallmarks of a creative person is the ability to tolerate ambiguity, dissonance, inconsistency, things out of place. But one of the rules of a well-run corporation is that surprise is to be minimized. Yet if this rule were applied to the creative process, nothing worth reading would get written, nothing worth seeing would get painted, nothing worth living with and using would ever get designed.
The total dividend income declared in 1995 by the bottom 9. 7 million Canadian tax-filers (47% of all those submitting tax returns) was $310 million. The estimated dividend income received by the Thomson family in 1995 from its 72% ownership share of the Thomson Corporation and its 22% ownership share of the Hudson's Bay Company was $310 million.
The corporation is not an independent "person" with its own rights, needs, and desires that regulators must respect. It is a state created tool for advancing social and economic policy.
The evangelical movement has become just a bit victimized by a success-oriented culture, wanting the church - like the corporation - to be successful.
At best, most college presidents are running something that is somewhere between a faltering corporation and a hotel.
No one owns you. One hundred per cent of the stock in your personal corporation belongs to you.
Women will change the corporation more than we expect.
One doesn't have to be a large corporation to benefit from the advantages of volume. This can also be achieved through joint ventures.
