Reimagining the Corporation: The Relevance of Legal, Economic and Political Imaginaries

Abstract

‘Management’ is widely and deeply embedded in ‘corporations’. Yet in many studies of management and organization, the corporation is an influential but shadowy and largely unaccounted-for presence: rarely is the modern, capitalist corporation thematized. This article contributes to remedying this omission by considering the corporation as a product of three imaginaries: legal, economic, and political. In the post-medieval order, the legal imaginary made possible the construction of the corporate form; the economic imaginary has promoted an expansion of this form and shaped its subsequent development; and, finally, the political imaginary is key to appreciating how politics—including the power of the state, is central to (i) the rise of the modern corporation; and (ii) a recognition of how the primacy of the political in the formation and development of the modern corporation—is articulated through, and obscured behind, the dominance of legal and economic imaginaries. Attending to the three imaginaries, it is argued, is critical to a thorough comprehension of the modern corporation, a concomitant appreciation of its deeply divisive and perverse consequences, and lastly, to the development of policies designed to counteract its effects.