Corporate capitalism | EPFL Graph Search

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In social science and economics, corporate capitalism is a capitalist marketplace characterized by the dominance of hierarchical and bureaucratic corporations. A large proportion of the economy of the United States and its labour market falls within corporate control. In the developed world, corporations dominate the marketplace, comprising 50% or more of all businesses. Those businesses which are not corporations contain the same bureaucratic structure of corporations, but there is usually a sole owner or group of owners who are liable to bankruptcy and criminal charges relating to their business. Corporations have limited liability and remain less regulated and accountable than sole proprietorships. Corporations are usually called public entities or publicly traded entities when parts of their business can be bought in the form of shares on the stock market. This is done as a way of raising capital to finance the investments of the corporation. The shareholders appoint the executives of the corporation, who are the ones running the corporation via a hierarchical chain of power, where the bulk of investor decisions are made at the top and have effects on those beneath them. Corporate capitalism has been criticized for the amount of power and influence corporations and large business interest groups have over government policy, including the policies of regulatory agencies and influencing political campaigns. Many social scientists have criticized corporations for failing to act in the interests of the people, and their existence seems to circumvent the principles of democracy, which assumes equal power relations between individuals in a society. In an April 29, 1938 message to the Congress, Franklin D. Roosevelt warned that the growth of private power could lead to fascism: [T]he liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

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Economic democracy

Economic democracy (sometimes called a Democratic Economy) is a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes to shift ownership and decision-making power from corporate shareholders and corporate managers (such as a board of directors) to a larger group of public stakeholders that includes workers, consumers, suppliers, communities and the broader public. No single definition or approach encompasses economic democracy, but most proponents claim that modern property relations externalize costs, subordinate the general well-being to private profit and deny the polity a democratic voice in economic policy decisions.

Corporate capitalism

Corporatocracy

Corporatocracy (ˌkɔrpərəˈtɒkrəsi, from corporate and -κρατία; short form corpocracy) is an economic, political and judicial system controlled by business corporations or corporate interests. The concept has been used in explanations of bank bailouts, excessive pay for CEOs, as well as complaints such as the exploitation of national treasuries, people, and natural resources. It has been used by critics of globalization, sometimes in conjunction with criticism of the World Bank or unfair lending practices, as well as criticism of free trade agreements.

Corporate Science, Innovation, and Firm Value

Markus Simeth

Many firms actively disclose research findings in scientific peer-reviewed journals. The literature highlights several potential benefits of such scientific boundary-spanning activities, including privileged access to academic information networks. However, scientific disclosure may lead to unintended knowledge spillovers. It remains unclear whether active engagement in science leads to higher returns. This paper investigates the impact of scientific activities on the firm’s market value, using accounting data for US firms and matched patent and scientific publication data. We find evidence for the positive impact of scientific publications on a firm’s market value beyond the effects of R&D, patent stocks and patent quality and also document heterogeneity with respect to this impact between different industrial sectors.

EPFL Working Paper Series2013

The dissertation investigates the phenomenon of firms that make voluntary contributions to the stock of scientific knowledge. Such a firm behaviour appears counterintuitive from a traditional viewpoint, since no direct financial returns can be expected while the disclosure of research outcomes may lead to knowledge spillovers to competing firms. This raises the questions why firms engage in those boundary-spanning activities, how scientific disclosure strategies are implemented, and to what extent scientific disclosure strategies affect the firm performance. The dissertation provides empirical evidence on these questions using representative firm-level data and econometric analysis techniques. The first chapter of the dissertation reviews the relevant literature, underlines the relevance of doing research on this topic by providing descriptive evidence on the amounts of scientific contributions by firms, and includes some novel insights from interviews which I conducted at several large R&D performing firms. I discuss the potential benefits, costs and organizational challenges of scientific disclosure strategies and position scientific publications as an expression of openness in the light of alternative openness definitions prevalent in innovation research. The second chapter focuses on the question why firms publish in scientific journals using a cost-benefit framework. In particular, I analyse whether scientific contributions of firms are used as an instrument to get access to academic knowledge networks. Moreover, I explore environmental conditions by considering the effectiveness of appropriation instruments and the spillover levels in a sector that may impact the firms’ decision-making process. The analysis relies on data from the French Innovation survey and provides evidence for the predictions that firms show reciprocal behaviour in exchange of obtaining valuable academic knowledge. However, the propensity of firms to publish is rather sensitive to the spillover threats. The third chapter examines how are firms able to publish by testing the requirements and origins of scientific contributions by firms. I explicitly consider the heterogeneity of scientific outputs and provide a complementary view on the requirements for the creation of inventive outcomes. The requirements considered can be classified according to the research orientation and the demographic composition of the R&D labs. The analysis revealed that scientific disclosure strategies require specific resource allocations and capabilities, which are in part not necessary for the generation of inventive outcomes. The findings support the view that disclosure strategies can be costly and are not only a by-product of the “usual” R&D activities. The fourth chapter addresses the performance effects of scientific activities of firms. More specifically, I examine whether scientific publications stocks provide valuable information to the financial markets, potentially leading to different valuations. I consider the heterogeneity of scientific and inventive outcomes and found evidence for a positive impact of scientific contributions on the firm’s Tobin’s Q beyond the effects of R&D stocks, patent stocks and patent quality.

EPFL2013

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