| In THE CORPORATION, case studies,
anecdotes and true confessions reveal behind-the-scenes
tensions and influences in several corporate and anti-corporate
dramas. Each illuminates an aspect of the corporation's
complex character.
Among the 40 interview subjects are CEOs and top-level
executives from a range of industries: oil, pharmaceutical,
computer, tire, manufacturing, public relations, branding,
advertising and undercover marketing; in addition, a Nobel-prize
winning economist, the first management guru, a corporate
spy, and a range of academics, critics, historians and
thinkers are interviewed.
A LEGAL "PERSON"
In the mid-1800s the corporation emerged as a legal "person."
Imbued with a "personality" of pure self-interest,
the next 100 years saw the corporation's rise to dominance.
The corporation created unprecedented wealth. But at what
cost? The remorseless rationale of "externalities"-as
Milton Friedman explains: the unintended consequences
of a transaction between two parties on a third-is responsible
for countless cases of illness, death, poverty, pollution,
exploitation and lies.
THE PATHOLOGY OF COMMERCE: CASE HISTORIES
To more precisely assess the "personality" of
the corporate "person," a checklist is employed,
using actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization
and the DSM-IV, the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists
and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation
give it a highly anti-social "personality":
It is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and
deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get
its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic
the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. Four
case studies, drawn from a universe of corporate activity,
clearly demonstrate harm to workers, human health, animals
and the biosphere. Concluding this point-by-point analysis,
a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional
embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the
diagnostic criteria of a "psychopath."
MINDSET
But what is the ethical mindset of corporate players?
Should the institution or the individuals within it be
held responsible?
The people who work for corporations may be good people,
upstanding citizens in their communities - but none of
that matters when they enter the corporation's world.
As Sam Gibara, Former CEO and Chairman of Goodyear Tire,
explains, "If you really had a free hand, if you
really did what you wanted to do that suited your personal
thoughts and your personal priorities, you'd act differently."
Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, the world's largest commercial
carpet manufacturer, had an environmental epiphany and
re-organized his $1.4 billion company on sustainable principles.
His company may be a beacon of corporate hope, but is
it an exception to the rule?
MONSTROUS OBLIGATIONS
A case in point: Sir Mark Moody-Stuart recounts an exchange
between himself (at the time Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell),
his wife, and a motley crew of Earth First activists who
arrived on the doorstep of their country home. The protesters
chanted and stretched a banner over their roof that read,
"MURDERERS." The response of the surprised couple
was not to call the police, but to engage their uninvited
guests in a civil dialogue, share concerns about human
rights and the environment and eventually serve them tea
on their front lawn. Yet, as the Moody-Stuarts apologize
for not being able to provide soy milk for their vegan
critics' tea, Shell Nigeria is flaring unrivaled amounts
of gas, making it one of the world's single worst sources
of pollution. And all the professed concerns about the
environment do not spare Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other
activists from being hanged for opposing Shell's environmental
practices in the Niger Delta.
The Corporation exists to create wealth, and even world
disasters can be profit centers. Carlton Brown, a commodities
trader, recounts with unabashed honesty the mindset of
gold traders while the twin towers crushed their occupants.
The first thing that came to their minds, he tells us,
was: "How much is gold up?"
PLANET INC.
You'd think that things like disasters, or the purity
of childhood, or even milk, let alone water or air, would
be sacred. But no. Corporations have no built-in limits
on what, who, or how much they can exploit for profit.
In the fifteenth century, the enclosure movement began
to put fences around public grazing lands so that they
might be privately owned and exploited. Today, every molecule
on the planet is up for grabs. In a bid to own it all,
corporations are patenting animals, plants, even your
DNA.
Around things too precious, vulnerable, sacred or important
to the public interest, governments have, in the past,
drawn protective boundaries against corporate exploitation.
Today, governments are inviting corporations into domains
from which they were previously barred.
PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT
The Initiative Corporation spends $22 billion worldwide
placing its clients' advertising in every imaginable -
and some unimaginable - media. One new medium: very young
children. Their "Nag Factor" study dropped jaws
in the world of child psychiatry. It was designed not
to help parents cope with their children's nagging, but
to help corporations formulate their ads and promotions
so that children would nag for their products more effectively.
Initiative Vice President Lucy Hughes elaborates: "You
can manipulate consumers into wanting, and therefore buying
your products. It's a game."
Today people can become brands (Martha Stewart). And
brands can build cities (Celebration, Florida). And university
students can pay for their educations by shilling on national
television for a credit card company (Chris and Luke).
And a corporation even owns the rights to the popular
song "Happy Birthday" (a division of AOL-Time-Warner).
Do you ever get the feeling it's all a bit much?
Corporations have invested billions to shape public and
political opinion. When they own everything, who will
stand for the public good?
THE PRICE OF WHISTLEBLOWING
It turns out that standing for the public good is an expensive
proposition. Ask Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two investigative
reporters fired by Fox News after they refused to water
down a story on rBGH, a controversial synthetic hormone
widely used in the United States (but banned in Europe
and Canada) to rev up cows' metabolism and boost their
milk production. Because of the increased production,
the cows suffer from mastitis, a painful infection of
the udders. Antibiotics must then be injected, which find
their way into the milk, and ultimately reduce people's
resistance to disease.
Fox demanded that they rewrite the story, and ultimately
fired Akre and Wilson. Akre and Wilson subsequently sued
Fox under Florida's whistle-blower statute. They proved
to a jury that the version of the story Fox would have
had them put on the air was false, distorted or slanted.
Akre was awarded $425,000. Then Fox appealed, the verdict
was overturned on a technicality, and Akre lost her award.
[For an update on the case see Disc 2 where we learn that
at one point, Jane and Steve became liable for Fox's $1.8
million court costs, later to be reduced to $200,000.]
DEMOCRACY LTD.
Democracy is a value that the corporation just doesn't
understand. In fact, corporations have often tried to
undo democracy if it is an obstacle to their single-minded
drive for profit. From a 1934 business-backed plot to
install a military dictator in the White House (undone
by the integrity of one U.S. Marine Corps General, Smedley
Darlington Butler) to present-day law-drafting, corporations
have bought military might, political muscle and public
opinion.
And corporations do not hesitate to take advantage of
democracy's absence either. One of the most shocking stories
of the twentieth century is Edwin Black's recounting IBM's
strategic alliance with Nazi Germany-one that began in
1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and
continued well into World War II.
FISSURES
The corporation may be trying to render governments impotent,
but since the landmark WTO protest in Seattle, a rising
wave of networked individuals and groups have decided
to make their voices heard. Movements to challenge the
very foundations of the corporation are afoot: The corporate
charter revocation movement tried to bring down oil giant
Unocal; a groundbreaking ballot initiative in Arcata,
California, put the corporate agenda in the public spotlight
in a series of town hall meetings; in Bolivia, the population
fought and won a battle against a huge transnational corporation
brought in by their government to privatize the water
system; in India nearly 99% of the basmati patent of RiceTek
was overturned; and W. R. Grace and the U.S. government's
patent on Neem was revoked.
As global individuals take back local power, a growing
re-invigoration of the concept of citizenship
is taking root. It has the power to not only strip
the corporation of its seeming omnipotence, but
to create a feeling and an ideology of democracy
that is much more than its mere institutional
version.
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