The Corporation and the Local Community

Abstract

The corporation and the local community repre sent sometimes conflicting ends for members of the corporate hierarchy. There is a citizenship of the corporation and a citizenship of the local territorial community that may and do conflict. The corporation offices constitute many of the top status positions in the local community; the behavior of cor porate managers influences that of many others. Where cor porate managers are more loyal to the corporation than to the local community, the natives, the local citizens, are as likely to resent this as exploitation as are the people of a banana re public to resent the alien rule of the fruit company. Yet cor porate managers are supposed to be primarily businessmen run ning a business on a competitive basis. If they forget this and run a welfare organization, the business and the economy suffer. The conflict between immobile territorial loyalities and the need for the mobile recombination of the factors of produc tion is built into the situation. Corporate managers cannot escape involvement in local politics, for they have power. They must, in a sense, be alien if they are true to the interests of the corporation and, indeed, to the larger economy. But, if they are visibly alien as irresponsible holders of power over local lives, they must be hateful to the natives. The dilemma is real, and no public-relations wand will wave it away.