Slides from our first class below. jon

Having jumped into this discussion relatively late, I appreciate that a lot of my peers have rather succinctly captured my first impression of the film.  I find one of the most interest parts of the film is that it has been 13 years since the film premiered and basically nothing has changed.  It is an […]

I found The Corporation to be informative, however, it only emphasized the idea that corporations only look out for their own interest at the expense of society. I think it is evident that there have been times corporations have gone too far in their search for profits, however, it is also their search for profits […]

     When “The Corporation” came out in 2003, my Grade 7 science teacher had us watch it and at the time I thought it was painfully boring, aside from the parts about advertising to children and corporations sending messages via marketing, because well, I was more of a child at that time. I remain […]

The documentary, while clearly setting out numerous examples of situations in which a corporation performs socially undesirable acts in the name of profit, reaches a conclusion which I am not entirely comfortable with, namely that corporations are psychopathic entities. My discomfort with this conclusion stems from the fact that corporations are anthropomorphised in order to […]

Upon watching the film, I was stunned, and also obviously uncomfortable with some of the realities brought to light (which we are often sheltered from). Particularly the concept of the tragedy of the commons which is seemingly perpetuated by big corporations in their determination to make profits. I feel somewhat like a cog in the […]

While the Corporation does reveal some disturbing realities about the way in which corporations operate, I found the documentary to be lacking in balance. No one would dispute that Monsanto, Exxon and other companies have perpetrated devastating and detestable actions on workers and the environment. But these companies must only represent a small fraction of […]

The Corporation was quite an interesting documentary. To be honest, I don’t know much about businesses and company law at the moment and I feel ambiguous on whether or not I am convinced that corporations are inevitably going to behave badly or be psychopathic (perhaps due to my lack of knowledge in the area!). On […]

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 […]

In the ‘limited liability’ section of the Unit 1 material, it is suggested that a ‘countervailing consideration’ which arises out of limited liability is the encouragement of opportunistic behaviour by corporations. Although shareholders are meant to be protected by company law, the corporation, when possible, may seek to protect its own interests separate from this […]

I thought the movie lacked any mention of the various ways in which corporations are regulated. Many of the examples cited by Bakan, including Monsanto and US companies profiting from the Nazi regime, are examples of cases where regulators have failed to reign in the profit-seeking nature of corporations. I fail to see how this […]

From the very beginning, the film demonized the corporation and it felt like a dark deep black hole from there revealing the terrible things corporations do—as the film points out, they are solely motivated by profit.  I made a conscious decision to try and find some parts in the film that portrayed the corporation in […]

It wasn’t until I was over an hour into The Corporation that I realized I had seen it before. One line in particular reminded me that I’d watched the documentary for a class in high school. At around the 1:02:30 mark, the filmmakers interject and say “It sounds like you’re advocating private ownership of every […]

The corporation as a subordinate group, serving public interest and limited by the Charter granted to them is far removed from the operations we see in modern corporations. And of course, ho-hum, corporate lawyers led the charge to remove these constraints. I had never learnt about the history of corporations, just basic economics, so a […]

I was already familiar with many of the social ills and critiques leveled at corporations and capitalism in general; I was hoping to learn more about the legal form from this documentary than I did.  So, I will focus on some aspects of “personhood” I found interesting. In regards to anthropomorphizing corporations, perhaps what they […]