When I reflect on the idea of a company as being recognized by law to coordinate the activities required to carry on a business designed to earn profits, one of the predominant ‘activities’ that occurs to me is that of the corporation as a risk-taking entity. Corporations have mostly developed by bearing risks that individuals could not or would not afford to bear – with mixed results. Of course, with risk-taking comes failure and certain unforeseen consequences – but this is also the process which has led to innovation and progress. In order to foster the positive side of this equation, I certainly feel that the arguments raised toward the end of the film hold valuable weight: we need to “look at the legal form that created this beast and think: who can hold them accountable?” If corporations in a globalized world are now seen to have grown beyond the grasp of governmental control, as was noted in the film, the growing concern of many individuals that corporations will inevitably behave badly is not unfounded. As suggested in the film, corporations appear to be in control of the patterns of change, the “reconfiguring of public policy”. At the heart of the issue seems to be that legal concepts often lag behind developments in businesses, such that the market creates its own solutions until the law catches up. But even so, I’m not certain whether simply increasing regulation will prove an effective solution in the long run.
Consequently, I think the argument raised in the film of accountability through public perception provides a promising avenue for preserving more control over corporations’ pattern of change – particularly in light of the change in human behaviour towards the constant sharing and disseminating of information via a multitude of platforms. The enhanced accessibility to information and to others (which, I will note, is mostly provided by corporations), is a reason that the way in which corporations have changed and will continue to change matters: if the corporation survives and grows through profit-making endeavours, public perception of the corporation can also continue to influence change as the ultimate source of the corporation’s profit remains, I think, the (informed) consumer.
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In light of the increasingly international nature of today’s corporations national governments are struggling to enact effective and meaningful regulatory regimes. Perhaps, the solution to multinational corporations can be found in supranational governments like the European Union. Often problems faced by national governments when it comes to regulating corporations arise from the simple fact that corporations engage in a type of ‘forum shopping’, searching for jurisdictions with more a more favourable regulatory climate. Supranational governments are in a somewhat better position, due simply to the fact that they control a larger territory than any individual national government, potentially giving them more leverage when regulating corporations.