Life Inc

Books Life Inc. How Corporatism Conquered the World,and How We Can Take It Back This didn't just happen. In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from a convenient legal fiction to the dominant fact of contemporary life. This fascinating journey reveals the roots of our debacle, from the late Middle Ages to today. Most of all, Life Inc. shows how the current financial crisis is actually an opportunity to reverse this 600-year-old trend, and to begin to create, invest and transact directly rather than outsourcing all this activity to institutions that exist solely for their own sakes. Corporatism didn't evolve naturally. Rushkoff illuminates both how we've become disconnected from our world, and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and mostly, to one another. Taking on some of the biggest assumptions of our age, this is a book filled with dangerous ideas and rather unspeakable heresies:

The Argument for Stakeholder Principles - The Vital Edge This post summarizes a 1995 academic paper by Thomas Donaldson and Lee E. Preston, called “The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications.” From time-to-time, I will highlight important papers like this to make them more easily accessible. What is a Stakeholder? Flipping that definition a bit, you could also say that stakeholders are those people with a legitimate interest in the firm, which is to say, people who stand to gain from the successful operation of the business. In other words, they have a stake in its success. The stakeholder perspective differs from the traditional view of business, which is sometimes pictured as an “input-output” model, where investors, suppliers and employees contribute inputs into the firm, with the resulting outputs going out to the customer: In contrast, the stakeholder model pictures many more players at the table, each contributing and receiving something from the firm’s operations: Why Care About Stakeholder Theory?

Business Structures - Business Structure Guide Choose the Right Legal Structure for your Company Business structures can vary as widely as the types of businesses that use them. When setting up a business, choosing the right structure can be critical to the success and life of the company. Sole Proprietor: this is the most traditional form of business, where one simply goes into business in their own name or under a "doing business as" (DBA) trade name. Partnership: this is another very common form of business ownership. Corporations: this is a form of business ownership that creates a separate legal entity which is jointly owned by multiple investors. Limited Liability Companies: these are a relatively new addition to the forms of business ownership. Choosing a Legal Structure for your Business Business IncorporationWhen beginning a business, you must decide what form of business entity to establish. Sole Proprietorship Information Business Partnerships Information C and S Corporation Information Limited Liability Company Information