| When we think of innovations in human history we are apt to think in terms of technological innovations and overlook important breakthroughs in human organization. The present dissertation seeks to develop a general, ontological theory of one such human innovation, the corporation . Here the term 'corporation' is intended in the broadest sense to include numerous forms of human organization. Along these lines the limited liability corporation is just one (albeit conspicuous) species of corporate entity. Ontology is the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects, properties, events, processes and relations in every area of reality. The ontology of the corporation, then, seeks to uncover the sort of thing that a corporation is as well as the sorts of processes and relations that are involved in its creation, maintenance and continued existence. First and foremost, I will defend corporate realism which is the view that corporate entities have an existence that is separate from that of its members. |
