Doug Mackenzie wrote:  
>   
> Corporations are collections of individuals. Each  
> corporation has a clearly discernible number of  
> shareholders, large and small. Each corporation has a  
> specific number of individual board members, officers,  
> managers, and employees. These persons interact  
> according to the explicit terms of (incomplete)  
> contracts, some implicit or informal agreements, and  
> their individual interests. There is also a component  
> of uncertianty that each individual faces, as is  
> always the case in any complex system. What else  
> exists beyond these individual components? How is a  
> corporation greater than the sum of its parts?   
  
  
This is one theory of the corporation. There are others. It is incomplete  
because it does not define the boundaries of the corporation, i.e., which  
contracts are internal and which are external. It does not include the  
phenomenon of the corporation entering into contracts with other economic  
entities as if it were an individual. My question was about a collective acting  
as an individual. A legal fiction perhaps? But one that presents real  
theoretical difficulties for individualism.  
  
Rod Hay