Corporate Personality Research Articles

Intellectual property and the professionals

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Sewell, ‘Temporalities of Capitalism,’ 534. 2. Galambos, ‘Technology, Political Economy.’ 3. Lamoreaux, Raff and Temin, ‘Beyond Markets.’ 4. Lamoreaux and Sokoloff, ‘The Decline,’ 20. 5. Graham and Pruitt, R&D for Industry; Israel, From Machine Shop. 6. Graham and Pruitt, R&D for Industry; Hounshell and Smith, Science and Corporate Strategy; Graham and Shuldiner, Corning and the Craft. 7. Trimble, Jerome Hunsaker; Graham, ‘R&D and Competition.’ 8. Lamoreaux and Sokoloff, ‘The Decline.’ 9. Graham, ‘Henry P. Gage.’ 10. Hintz, ‘The Post Heroic’; ‘Independent Inventors’; ‘Portable Power’. 11. Blaszczyk, The Color Revolution. 12. Blaszczyk, Imagining Consumers. 13. Graham, ‘Henry P. Gage.’ 14. Graham and Shuldiner, Corning and the Craft. 15. Johnson, ‘Law and the History.’ The corporate person could be either a distinct entity or an aggregation of individuals. 16. Bowker, Science on the Run, 117–19. 17. Graham, ‘Entrepreneurship.’ 18. Pursell, ‘Government and Technology’. 19. Brittain, Alexanderson. 20. Graham and Shuldiner, Corning and the Craft. 21. Graham, RCA and the VideoDisc. 22. Hintz, ‘The Post-Heroic,’ 742–3; Waller, ‘The Legacy;’ Hart, ‘Antitrust.’ 23. Galambos, ‘Technology, Political Economy.’ 24. O’Sullivan, Contests for Corporate. 25. Graham and Pruitt, R&D for Industry. 26. Graham, RCA and the VideoDisc. 27. Graham and Pruitt, R&D for Industry. 28. Block and Keller, ‘Where do Innovations.’

Assessment of teaching corporate entrepreneurship to masters level students

Tertiary education in terms of entrepreneurship is not adequate to stimulate entrepreneurial activity in South Africa. By assessing the effect and successfulness of tertiary modules offered in entrepreneurship (and in this case specifically corporate entrepreneurship) an improvement can be made to these courses which would lead to increased entrepreneurial activity. The purpose of this paper is to determine the effect of a corporate entrepreneurship module that has been offered to master’s level students. The research is designed as a formal study where stated hypotheses are tested to demonstrate if there is a statistical significant difference between the corporate entrepreneurial style and personality of students (over a period of three year) before and after they have completed a master’s level module in CE. A pre- and post test were conducted over a period of three years (2007 – 2009). A self-administered questionnaire was used to obtain the data. A judgemental purposive sampling technique was used and the sample consisted of 101 students. The results indicated that there is a statistical significant difference between the corporate entrepreneurial styles and personalities of students that have completed the course as well as the Intrapreneurial Performance Index. It is recommended that tertiary institutions, specifically in South Africa, must adopt a corporate entrepreneurship module in their post-graduate programmes which will assist to equip employees to become more entrepreneurial within existing businesses. Key words: Corporate entrepreneurship; corporate entrepreneurship style; corporate entrepreneurial personality; education; Intrapreneurial Performance Quotient; teaching methods.

Roberto Esposito’s Political Biology and Corporate Forms of Life

Roberto Esposito has suggested a fracture structures the concept of “the person” that is related to the convergence of biology and law in Western thought. He also suggests that Nazism’s rendering of this intersection is instructive for understanding the biopolitics of liberal globalization. This essay expands Esposito’s argument by considering corporate personhood. I suggest that while the dynamics of personalism and depersonalization are central to corporate power, Nazi political biology is not particularly useful for understanding its origins or development. Instead, I draw attention to the spatiality of the legal concepts grounding capitalism, including the corporate person.

Relationship between Business Corporations' and Human Rights: A Legal Analysis

This article explores the ‘relationship between the business corporations and human rights’ in legal context. ‘Business corporations’ is a powerful vehicle for economic, social, and cultural amelioration; particularly in developing countries via job creation and diffusion of technology, scientific advances, and management skills. They are expected to respect the sovereign interest of the host State. The latter is in turn also duty bound to reciprocate by fulfilling what it has undertaken while contracting with the business corporations. This article begins with a brief introduction, followed by making a legal analysis of the definition of legal personality of business corporations; explaining the importance of corporate social responsibility in the human rights context in this globalized market; focusing on liability of business corporations for violation of human rights; making a legal analysis on international regulations to control business corporations including SRSGs draft ‘guiding principles’ for the implementation of the United Nations ‘protect, respect and remedy’ framework; analyzing the case laws related to the human rights litigations against business corporations; and finally concluding with few suggestions to improve the litigation and framing of international legal settings for regulating ‘business corporations’ for abuse of human rights.

Corporate Personality and Lifitng of the Corporate Veil

Corporate veil has been one of the most controversial subjects under corporate. Over the year, various judicial and legislative bodies have looked into the subject and have had differing and varied views. This paper will provide an understanding of the concept of corporate veil and will analyze how different Courts have interpreted this concept over the period of years. This paper then looks into various attributes of corporate personality and analyses each one of them. The paper along with explaining the characteristic feature of corporate personality also analyses when and why Courts can lift corporate veil. An analysis of reasoning of Courts is provided in the last part of the paper. This paper concludes by providing explanation on Statutory provisions under which veil of a corporation can be pierced.

Confronting Complexities in Fact-Finding and the Nature of Investor-State Arbitration

Reverting to the Annual Meeting theme--Confronting Complexity--I will focus on fact-finding in investor-state arbitration, especially on the state side. One must recognize that there are overarching complexities in investor-state arbitration. First, there is inherent complexity in having a commercial entity (primarily interested in profit from a commercial venture) on the international law plane with a state (whose interests are broader, broader even than attracting investment). Facts for states are very different than facts for individuals and companies. Second, investor-state tribunals are, by definition, ad hoc. There is only one three-member panel at a time. This means there is not the opportunity to develop consistency in standards of proof that we see with standing tribunals such as the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission (EECC). Third, one must also recognize specific fact-finding complexities in investor-state arbitration. To mention just a few obvious ones: --Who is the investor? What is the investor's nationality? --Who is the state when you have an allegedly state-controlled entity? --At what point do measures that fall short of outright nationalization constitute an indirect expropriation, unfair and inequitable treatment, and/or discriminatory treatment? To recognize that there are fact-finding complexities in investor-state cases should not be to succumb to them. The often unruly state of fact-finding in investor-state arbitration awards is not necessary. My submission is that tribunals and counsel can do a better job in such cases by following basic practices to control and mitigate complexities. After identifying certain of these practices, I will focus on inference-drawing about state motivation by looking to the 1949 ICJ Corfu Channel case. (1) BEST PRACTICES FOR MANAGING INVESTOR-STATE FACT-FINDING First, which fact-finding mechanisms are available in investor-state arbitrations? They are obvious and not necessarily complex: standard of proof and burden of proof. Investor-state tribunals can and should be proactive in setting out both the standard of proof and the burden of proof--issue-by-issue, claim-by-claim, and defense-by-defense-earlier and more clearly in proceedings. The tribunal should police counsel to adhere to standards and burdens of proof. The tribunal should apply them rigorously in its deliberations and awards, including by dismissing claims or defenses for failure to meet the standard or burden of proof. A holding in an award based on failure of proof should be sufficient to withstand an annulment or setting-aside process. As someone who only serves as counsel in investor-state treaty arbitrations, not as an arbitrator, I most admire awards that have a clean, lean--and to use David Caron's word--elegant architecture on standards and burdens of proof. As counsel, of course we often do have to postpone or avoid taking final positions on the standard of proof and who has the burden of proof, as part of the adversarial process. As counsel, once these issues are determined, we must abide by the tribunal's determination and plead accordingly. The issue of state control of an entity poses particular challenges. Foreign investors regularly deal with state-owned and state-controlled entities, created for the very purpose of entering into commercial contracts, joint ventures, and administering public services. Some such entities have separate corporate personalities and exercise purely commercial functions and, therefore, would not fall under Article 4 (as an organ of the state) or Article 5 (as empowered by the law of that state to exercise elements of governmental authority) of the ILC Articles on State Responsibility for purposes of attribution to the state. Tribunals then must ask whether an entity may be said to be controlled by the state within the meaning of Article 8 of the ILC Articles. …

Corporate Personality: A Politico‐Jurisprudential Argument

AbstractThis article is an attempt to develop a practical politico‐jurisprudential account of the corporate person, which it does by building on contemporary ideas about collective and shared intentions. It argues for a model of shared intentions, which posits a set of interlocking preferences, and other supporting attitudes. It examines the work of Bratman, Gilbert, Hurley, and Sugden and addresses issues of choice, coercion and will.

UNDERSTANDING NORMATIVE PERSONALITY

Organization theory has not demonstrated that it is able to adequately represent organizational complexity, especially in its inability to recognize and predict organizational conduct/misconduct. A promising approach comes from organizational culture theory, which is used in order to create a new model for normative personality that is seated in the strategic part of the organization. This takes the idea of corporate personality beyond its more usual metaphorical use. The theory of normative personality is developed by using a cybernetic frame of reference, drawing on socio-cognitive and trait theory. As a compact way of connecting traits into the model, mindscape theory is adopted. The outcome of this approach illustrates the control processes through which an organization operates and will have the capacity of not only identifying patterns of behavior/operative conduct but also misconduct.

The Concept of ‘Person’

The concept of ‘person’ ( hypostasis) demands a theological reformulation in the emerging context of inculturation and interreligious dialogue. Especially in Asia, there has been a remarkable growth in theological reflection on this concept in these past 40 years. Asian Catholic theology has been seriously committed to the dialogue with Eastern religions and in the promotion of justice. In revisiting the concept ‘person / hypostasis,’ we are called to redefine basic theological categories: identity, kenosis, divine sonship, corporate personality and mediation. The contribution of Asian theologians—particularly Raimon Panikkar, Masao Abe, Aloysius Pieris and Peter Phan—is crucial for the reappraisal of Western theology and for the renewal of Christology in the name of the oppressed and the marginalized.

Tekste, ko-tekste en kon-tekste van die leë graf in die Jesus-tradisie

Texts, co-texts, and con-texts of the empty tomb in the Jesus traditionAn investigation of texts, co-texts and con-texts of the empty tomb in the Jesus tradition provides a “situation-specific common background knowledge” (Auer, 1996:18-19) from which perspective this article is written. The article aims to argue that the myth behind the empty tomb in the Jesus tradition deploys a trajectory of five links. Its origin, the first of the five links, is to be found in the metaphorical use of the motif of recreation analogous to the foundational narrative in Israel’s historical memoirs of God’s “creatio ex nihilo”. The foundational narrative consists of a collective anthropological facet and an indivdual psychological facet. The anthropological facet is manifested in the memoir of the suppression of Israel as a downtrodden nation. The individual facet pertains to the martyred heroes in Israel’s history. In this article the five links of the trajectory are conceptualised in five chronological phases represented by specific textual evidence. They are, firstly, the descent of a corpse into the sheol; secondly, the objectifying of metaphorical language about the resurrection of the dead, which refers to either Israel as a “corporate personality” or individuals; thirdly, the Hellenisation of the resurrection belief pattern which existed in the Semitic, Eastern-Mediterranean world, in the light of the theology of apotheosis/divinisation and ideas about immortality and reincarnation; and fourthly, the empowerment of suffering righteous mortals when participating in the renewed life of resurrected/ascended divine heroes. The fifth phase pertains to the period when the other four phases reached an apogee and resurrection belief served as a kind of coping-healing. The article aims to argue that the hermeneutical significance of the empty tomb in the Jesus tradition is to be found in the third phase. The modes in terms of which Jesus’ empty tomb were interpreted by the first “Christ-followers” are to be found in phases four and five.

The emergence of provincial debt in the county of Holland (thirteenth-sixteenth centuries)

Historians often use the concept of financial revolutions to explain the rise of the Dutch Republic, claiming that innovations in government funding allowed for marked progress in the field of public finance. The article focuses on the medieval precursors of the financial revolution, which the States of Holland brought about when they introduced province-wide public debt in the sixteenth century. The relevant techniques were already known, but predominantly used for political rather than financial purposes. Therefore techniques such as collective responsibility for debt were scarcely implemented. The article hypothesizes that sovereigns made use of the corporate personality of public bodies to increase ties with the main towns of Holland, and thus they used collective responsibility for debt to create stability. This only became a major financial instrument at the turn of the sixteenth century, when a financial crisis forced both sovereign and main towns to reorganize the medieval system of debt servicing. This centralization was crucial for the large public debt the county of Holland created under the Dutch Republic and may even be regarded as a step in the direction of national debt.

Corporate brand: The company-customer misalignment and its performance implications

Fit or co-alignment between company and customer perspectives is an important theoretical proposition in corporate branding theory. Utilizing three corporate brands in the Australian automobile industry, this research conceptualizes co-alignment as profile deviation and examines the effects of deviation from the company-specified corporate brand on customer loyalty and satisfaction. Management practice tells us that organizations invest significant resources to encourage customer satisfaction and loyalty. From the comparison of congruence models, this study demonstrates that in addition to the quantum of spend, alignment of company and customer corporate brand perspectives can be an important source of customer satisfaction and loyalty. The ideal corporate brand, as specified by senior management was used as a benchmark. The corporate brand construct included corporate associations, corporate personality and customer benefits. The results, which were robust across three corporate brands, generally support the hypotheses of negative performance impact of company-customer misalignment. However, positive performance implications of customer deviation on corporate personality suggest that the effects of misalignment are complex and that it is useful to explore corporate brand dimensions individually.

A Study on the Effect of Corporate Personality on the Corporate Attractiveness : Focusing on e-business companies

A Study on the Effect of Corporate Personality on the Corporate Attractiveness : Focusing on e-business companies

The Personality Of The Greek State

Abstract:Were thepoleisof Classical Greece state-based or stateless communities? Do their political structures meet standard criteria for full statehood? Conventional wisdom maintains that they do not. According to a broad consensus, the Classicalpoliswas neither state-based nor stateless as such, but something somewhere in between: a unique, category-defying formation that was somehow both ‘state’ and ‘society’ simultaneously, a kind of inseparable fusion of the two. The current paper offers an alternative perspective on this complex but fundamental issue. It questions prevailing views on theoretical grounds, suggesting that the consensus ‘fusionist’ position rests ultimately upon a misunderstanding of what Thomas Hobbes would call the ‘personality’ ofpolispolitical structures. Focusing on the case of Classical Athens, it then proceeds to present a new account of the Greek ‘state’, an account that aims to be both theoretically satisfying and heuristically useful. Even if all those who performed state functions were simultaneously constituents ofpolis‘society’, the state was nevertheless perceived to function as an autonomous agency, possessing a corporate personality that was quite distinct from the individual personalities of the living, breathing citizens who happened to instantiate it at any particular time.

A social psychological basis of corruption and sociopathology

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the social psychological basis of pathologies, from which result neuroses and behaviours like corruption and sociopathic behaviour. It takes the perspective that social collectives have normative minds and can be explored in terms of their social psychological processes.Design/methodology/approachKnowledge cybernetics will be used to show how pathologies can develop from the interconnection between such noumenal attributes as ideology and ethics.FindingsSocial entities have similar psychological pathologies to individual ones. Piaget's notions of how the mind operates can be applied to corporate personality, and their inability to create and coordinate different perspectives can be seen as an organisational pathology.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper is a theoretical construct that explores corruption and sociopathology at a deep conceptual level. It requires elaboration through case examples to provide pragmatic meaning.Practical implicationsThe capacity to create a methodology that is able to explore the existence and development of pathologies.Originality/valueThis is the first approach of this type using cybernetics to explore at a high conceptual focus the development of pathologies like corruption and sociopathic behaviour.

Transgenerational association: extending the notion of the person - RETRACTION

This paper develops the idea of transgenerational association. It addresses intrapersonal distributions of wellbeing over time. It develops the notion of temporal distributions between generations, and posits that it is possible to overcome the problems that obstruct ethical individualism. It argues that corporate personality allows us to compare distributions between generations to distributions between the stages of one person.

The Curious Case of Directors' and Officers' Liability for Supervision and Management: Exploring the Intersection of Corporate and Tort Law

Directors’ and officers’ liability under corporate and securities laws continues to be a hotly debated subject. Yet, their liability toward non-shareholder third parties under common tort law and statutory provisions has generated relatively modest scholarly interest. Thus, it has gone mostly unnoticed that corporate directors and officers can be held personally liable in tort to non-shareholder third parties based on failures in exercising their core corporate duties - supervision and management.However, as this article explains, the current liability regime in this area is in need of repair. It fails to distinguish between the corporation’s duties and the duties of directors and officers, neglects the separate corporate personality of the corporation, unduly shifts the risk of doing business to directors and officers, and undermines the heightened liability protections provided to directors and officers by corporate laws. Consequently, a new approach is required. This article proposes a novel model for corporate liability that is centered around the nature of directors’ and officers’ duties and focuses on the individual’s state of mind. At its core, the proposed model is based on the belief that in order to preserve the corporate shield, liability standards in tort law should not conflate the standards imposed on individuals with those imposed on directors and officers.

Reflections on corporate reputations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to illustrate the importance of corporate reputation to the management of contemporary organisations.Design/methodology/approachThe approach takes the form of survey research and case studies. The paper is informed by corporate image and reputation research undertaken for major international corporations, governments and NGOs in the UK and in countries throughout the world dating back to the late 1960s.FindingsThe paper finds that corporate image is an important factor in the success or failure of virtually all major organisations; corporate reputation is the synthesis of many factors: the brand(s) image, the products (and/or services) class image(s), the brand user(s) image, the image of the country of perceived ownership of a corporation, and the corporate culture/personality; corporate reputations can be measured, and changes in corporate reputations can be tracked; and corporate responsibility is replacing corporate social responsibility as an increasingly important factor in how people regard the corporate reputation of organisations.Practical implicationsPolicy makers should actively research and manage their corporate reputation. Familiarity breeds favourability, not contempt. All too often senior managers and their advisers (brand and corporate consultants, design consultants, advertising and public relations advisers, etc.), who have responsibility for the organisation's corporate reputation, muddle the distinctions between corporate reputation, corporate image, corporate identity, corporate personality, corporate culture, and other ways by which the elements of the corporate reputation are defined, and therefore used and measured.Originality/valueThe paper shares some of the lessons learned from 40 years' experience of MORI. The paper also marshals insights from the published output, lectures, and image‐modelling work.

Uncovering Critical Hermeneutics in the Construction of the Meaning of Corporate Identity in the Nigerian Banking Industry

One of the important contributions of corporate marketing research lies within the relationship between corporate identity and corporate image. At the centre of this relationship is the social construction process through which corporate actors (at senior management level) express specific aspects of their corporate personalities with the intention of creating and maintaining a defined set of corporate relations. In this process, firms attempt to develop and convey various corporate personality messages that support the development of desired patterns of corporate relationships. This paper seeks to illustrate the use of a critical hermeneutically grounded approach in analyzing these attempts. Thus, this method is applied to the corporate advertising texts of the three largest banks in Nigeria, pre 2005. The deconstruction of these texts uncovers the industry construction of the meaning of corporate identity as a generic corporate personality. The emergence of this new concept broadens the ongoing discourse on the meaning of corporate identity and gives deeper insight into what corporate identity really means.

A Holistic Corporate Identity Communications Process

Purpose of paper: This paper addresses the total communications process. It seeks to examine how formal and informal corporate identity contributes towards the development of aligned or misaligned corporate identity in business organizations. Design/method/approach: A review of literature focusing on informal corporate identity development process together with the outcome of integrating formal corporate identity with informal corporate identity communication process was made. The risks associated with the emergence of a misaligned corporate identity were also highlighted. Importantly, two models highlighting how the informal corporate identity develops and the stage by stage processes through which the total corporate identity communications process works were established. Findings: A definition, which underscores the role of employee behavior as a critical factor in the meaning of informal corporate identity was developed. A six stage informal corporate identity development process including (1-corporate personality appraisal; 2-appraisal melding, positioning; 3-communications; 4-assimilation of corporate personality/corporate identity; 5-informal expression of corporate personality; 6-development of a corporate image) was developed. A similar model highlighting how a total corporate communications process works was advanced and the risks involved in the development of a misaligned corporate identity was put together. Similarly a 3 point advisory guide of how these risks can be curtailed was put forward. These include coercive, radical management, soft approach. Theoretical implication: Existing work on corporate identity communications has focused mainly on the formal aspects of corporate identity. There is limited literature addressing informal corporate identity and its effect on the total corporate identity communications process. This paper attempts to fill this gap. Importantly, the study will add to the existing literature of corporate identity and enhance in-depth understanding of this phenomenon. Practical implications: The development of a definition for informal corporate identity; insight into its process development and its role within the total corporate identity communications process implies that practitioners can develop a better understanding of this phenomenon. Insight into this process will provide managers with an understanding of how the total corporate identity communications process can be better managed. Limitation of study and future research direction: This is a conceptual study. There is a lack of empirical evidence this work. This presents an opportunity for future research. Originality and value of paper: This paper makes an attempt to contribute towards the field of corporate identity by providing insight into how the expression of informal corporate identity through employee behavior can derail the total corporate identity communications process. Insights into this process allows managers responsible for the management of corporate identity to circumvent a possible derailment in the total corporate identity communications process by developing preventive measures that will check, foil and avert such problems. A work of this nature is highly limited within the literature and it therefore makes this study unique, useful and original in all ramifications.