The Modern Corporation: The Site of a Mechanism (of Global Social Change) that Is Out-of-Control?

Abstract

The ways of acting of modern corporations, not least those that are multinational, constitute significant mechanisms of social change. I doubt that this assessment is overly contentious. Indeed, there is seemingly widespread agreement that the mechanisms in play are dynamic, pervasive and consequential.2 There is less agreement, however, as to the extent to which these mechanisms, or their effects, are especially desirable. Indeed, informed commentators regularly criticise the fact that multinational corporations almost everywhere operate beyond the control of various local regulators, not least tax authorities.3 Some go further, suggesting that corporations act in ways that are undermining of any semblance of democracy.4 A sizable few even express concern that modern corporations are not only frequently ‘beyond control’ (of local regulators and so forth) but also, on occasion at least, seemingly ‘out of control’.5 How, though, could such a scenario arise? How is it structurally feasible that the modern corporation could be frequently beyond the control of relevant authorities let alone out of control, or at least appearing to be so to various close observers? Presumably this appearance might be gathered from instances where mechanisms that a corporation grounds, or their effects, are of a sort that no one particularly wants or feels able to defend or prevent. But how could such interventions, be grounded? The foregoing are the sorts of questions I pursue here. That is, whilst most concerned commentators occupy themselves with examining ways of reining in corporations, with accommodating or relationally steering their mechanisms and thus effects, I want to explore the structural conditions of their possibility. I take it that any (generative) mechanism, at its most basic, is a property of some structured entity. A mechanism is a way of acting of that entity that is made possible by its organising (relational) structure; and it is triggered under various conditions. Put differently, it is a causal power of a structured entity in play6 (for an elaboration of this conception, see e.g. Lawson, 1997). My objective here, then, can be formulated as an enquiry concerned with identifying those aspects of the structuring of the corporation (in particular the multinational corporation) and its (triggering) conditions of operation that give rise to mechanisms of the sort under discussion. How are mechanisms that are widely found to be beyond the control (of interested parties) and sometimes suspected of being out of control, structurally grounded? At the heart of the answer, we will see, if somewhat unexpectedly (to this contributor at least), is a simple if somewhat bizarre case of a highly contingent, certainly in no clear way natural, form of social positioning. Though easily summarised this answer requires a good deal of (social-ontological) elaboration.