Corporate character is not just a legal construct
John kay
Can an organisation learn or forget? Can it have integrity or lack it? Can it laugh or be angry? Does a company have a soul? The film and book of The Corporation degenerate into tedious rants against modern business, but they raise a serious issue. Is there such a thing as corporate personality?
Treating companies as if they were people is not simply a conceit of management gurus. Some people ascribe the concept of corporate personality to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, which determined in 1819 that Darmouth College was an entity distinct from its current members. During the 19th century, judges and legislators elaborated this idea. The modern company can sue and be sued; its assets and liabilities are its own, not those of the people who manage or invest in it.
But can a company have thoughts, knowledge or intentions? The British government proposes to create an offence of corporate manslaughter. The definition of this crime, however, rests on the ability to make analogies between the behaviour of a business and that of an individual. What does it mean to say that an organisation was negligent? Is it possible to ascribe a state of mind to an abstraction?
Many economists and business people think this anthropomorphisation of the company is sentimental tosh. A company is a nexus of contracts defined by its charter or articles of association. Lawyers have tried to resolve the issue in a different way. They search for a “directing mind”, whose thoughts and desires can be detected in everything the organisation does. Many chief executives would happily cast themselves in the role of directing mind, and business journalists often write as though everything that happened at General Electric happened because Jack Welch willed it.
But neither the nexus of contracts nor the directing mind describes the reality of modern corporate life. If a business was no more than a nexus of contracts, you could establish an equally successful business by reproducing the nexus of contracts. You cannot, because an effective organisation relies on the social context surrounding its nexus of contracts. Customers might put their trust in contracts but generally prefer to rely on the reputation of the business and to deal with people they know. Workers may aspire to be part of a profitable nexus of contracts, but also look for a working environment in which they can take pride.
The personalisation of large companies is equally mistaken.
Mr Welch was the product of a
management system that ensured
the chief executive of General Electric was always the most admired chief executive in America; that shows it is the company, not the individual,
that really matters. The successful
business is necessarily more than an aggregate of agreements or people; just as the unsuccessful business is less than the aggregate of agreements or people.
The issue of corporate manslaughter arises precisely because sloppy businesses, such as Railtrack, have no directing mind: their failures were not the product of bad people, but of an arrogant and complacent corporate culture. In the truly dreadful organisation, everyone has positioned themselves not to be responsible when something goes wrong. The horror of Enron was not just that it was home to some corrupt people but that the environment encouraged their corruption.
So in both good and bad companies, corporate personality is a commercial reality, not just a legal construct. And if the company has its own distinctive character, like an individual, that refutes the claim that the company is necessarily amoral, that it has no ethics, only interests. This is the one nice point made in The Corporation: a personality devoid of moral sense, which is instrumental in its treatment of stakeholders, generally would be diagnosed by psychologists as psychopathic. Society punishes psychopathic personalities, through social ostracism and imprisonment, and it punishes psychopathic companies through the market and political action. That was the fate of Enron and Andersen, IG Farben and Japanese zaibatsu. Companies have no immortal soul but, like human beings, they live and die. While they live, they prosper by the attributes of their personality.
企业有没有性格?
机构能否学习，或是遗忘？机构能否保持正直，或者是缺乏正直？企业能不能笑，能不能怒？企业有没有一个灵魂？《公司》是一部电影，也是一本书，它们最后都落入俗套，乏味地抨击现代企业，但是它们也提出了一个严肃的问题。企业有没有一个性格？
把企业当成人来看，这并不是管理大师们突发奇想。有人就把企业性格的概念运用到了麻萨诸塞州高等法院身上。1819年，该法院就判定，达特茅斯学院（Darmouth College）属于独立实体，和它现有的成员应区别对待。这一想法被19世纪的法官和立法者发扬光大。现代企业可以提出起诉，也可以被人起诉；它的资产和负债是自己的，并不属于管理者和投资人。
但是，企业有没有思想，有没有知识，有没有意向呢？英国政府建议设立“企业杀人”一罪。但是这种罪行如何界定，就要看我们能否在商业行为和个人行为之间进行类比了。如果我们说某机构玩忽职守，这是什么意思呢？我们如何将某种抽象概念用人的某种思想状态来说明呢？
很多经济学家和商界人士认为，这种企业人类仿生学（anthropomorphisation）纯属滥情，纯属废话。一个企业应该是以一系列契约为中心，这些契约在公司章程或是相关条款的基础上界定的。它们寻求的是一种“主导思想”，它们要从企业的所作所为中探查出这“主导思想”所包含的所有想法和欲望。很多首席执行官都乐得充当“主导思想”的角色。很多商业记者也是一样：照他们的写法，似乎通用电气（GE）所做的一切，都是顺着杰克?韦尔奇（Jack Welch）的思路。
但是契约中心论也好，主导思想论也好，都没有描述出现代企业生活的现实。如果企业只是一系列契约，那么你把成功企业的契约复制过来，就应该复制一个成功的企业了？实则不然，因为有效的机构还要依靠围绕在契约周围的社会关系。客户或许会相信契约，但是总的来说，他们更愿意相信声誉，他们愿意和自己熟悉的人做生意。员工或许希望作为契约的一部分，能够从中获利，但是他们也希望寻找能够引以为豪的工作环境。
将大型企业人格化同样也是谬误。
韦尔奇先生是管理系统的产物。正因为这套管理系统，通用电气的首席执行官能够一直是美国最受人羡慕的企业总裁；这说明，重要的是企业，而不是个人。成功的企业，在有了这些契约或者人员之后，还有些别的东西。同理，不成功的企业除了这些契约或者人员之外，肯定有别的不足。
企业杀人的问题之所以暴露出来，其原因正是：一些比较马虎的企业，比如Railtrack，并没有主导思想：它们的失败并不是人员不好，而是因为公司有自高自大的不良文化。在一些企业，一旦出事，任何人都不负责任。这种企业最可怕。安然事件之所以恐怖，不单是因为安然出了一些腐败分子，而是因为整体环境对他们的腐败行为推波助澜。
所以，企业无论是好是坏，企业个性都是商业现实，而且不单是一个法律概念。如果企业和人一样，有着鲜明的个性，这就否定了企业超越道德的说法，说明企业除了利益之外，也是要讲究伦理的。《公司》里有个说法很好：企业对待利益相关人的关键一点是有个性但无道义，如果这种情形放在人身上，会被心理分析师诊断为心理变态。具有变态心理的人自然会遭到社会的惩罚，或与之隔离，或将其禁闭。具有变态心理的企业也会遭到惩罚，惩罚来自市场或者政治的行动。这就是安然、安达信（Andersen）、法本公司（IG Farben）和日本财阀的命运。
企业没有永生的灵魂，但是它们和人一样，有生老病死。企业的存活，靠的是它的性格特征。
