The Corporation: Organization as psychopath

CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.--The Devil's Dictionary

The Corporation is a new documentary opening in New York on June 30.

Corporations are treated as persons for legal purposes. What happens, the filmmakers ask, if you apply psychiatric standards to these legal persons? Corporations, it turns out, are psychopaths. Liberals often blame the misdeeds of corporations on the greed or malice of their managers. Enron, Tyco, and Worldcom were run by such individuals, but we can't explain all corporate misdeeds by appeal to the character flaws of management. The Corporation argues that much corporate misbehavior can be explained by corporate structure itself.

The Economist has this favorable review of The Corporation, entitled Face Value.

[Via Metamirror]

(Full disclosure: Bakan is a close family friend.)