The evolving corporation: when good corporations go bad; Part 1 of a series.

AuthorAssadourian, Erik

The modern corporation is the dominant form of business organization in the world today. Corporations' reach, however, is not limited to the business world. As they have multiplied in number, size, and power, corporations have also begun to exert extraordinary influence over the civic, economic, and cultural life of the human societies which host them. Although corporations are effective mechanisms for generating certain kinds of wealth, much of their influence can rightly be regarded as pernicious and even dangerous.

The term "hosts" hints at a biological metaphor--symbiosis--that is useful in describing the relationships between corporations and the societies in which they are embedded. This article explores the metaphor and lays out a general view of the problems that have arisen from the destructive evolution of corporations. Future articles will discuss ways to address these problems.

VARIETIES OF SYMBIOTIC EXPERIENCE

The corporate form of ownership dates to the European Middle Ages, when it applied mostly to towns, universities, and religious orders. Business corporations, when they arose much later, were initially established for specific purposes. Designed in order to raise larger amounts of capital than limited joint-stock ventures, they could be used to create new industries, colonize far-off continents, build new canals and railroads--all of which would benefit the overall public good. While allowed to benefit themselves (by earning profit), corporations were intended to exist in a mutualistic, symbiotic relationship with human society.

Nature invented such relationships and has evolved a great many of them. Living examples include Egyptian plovers, which eat the leeches off the gums of Nile crocodiles. A certain species of aphid excretes honeydew, a delicacy to its ant protectors. Rhizobia bacteria live in the roots of legumes and convert atmospheric nitrogen into a usable form while receiving energy in exchange.

Interestingly, mutualistic relationships are not stable endpoints in evolution, according to Clark University biologist David Hibbett, "but are inherently unstable and can be disrupted by conflicts of interest among the partners. The breakdown of mutualisms can lead to parasitism or even the complete dissolution of the symbiosis." Several species of yucca moth, for example, have evolved from pollinators of the yucca plant to non-pollinating seedeaters. And some plants have changed from being mutualistic traders of sugars for minerals with their fungal symbionts to energy-sucking parasites that draw both resources from fungal-plant networks.

The same dynamic--mutualism turned parasitism--can be seen in the relationships between corporations and human society. Originally this symbiosis was designed to be mutually beneficial. Evolving out of traditional business partnerships, early corporations were given limited mandates, primarily to serve particular societal or economic needs (for example, to provide a specific good or service) and in exchange were offered access to human energy (capital and labor). But the relationship has evolved into an increasingly parasitic one, in which corporations have seized more and more control of human society's energy and, while still providing goods and services in return, are also excreting toxins into its host organism--very much like the Glomus macrocarpum, a fungal species that provides phosphorous to the tobacco plant...

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