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?  
  
A corporation can have a collective intention which is entirely   
different from the individual intentions of its components in   
carrying out that intention and is not a mere summation.  A football   
team may have as its intent to score a touchdown, and by collectively   
managing the players individual intentions, e.g. to run a particular   
pass pattern, or block a particular person, it may succeed at that,   
while the individuals carry out their individual intentions with   
varying success. (example from philosopher John Searle, UC Berkeley).   
The same can be said for the corporation which by collectively   
managing its resources, and individual intentions, may create profit   
that was not possible simply by summing the individual intentions,   
but only by the coordinated collective effort was that   
possible.  There is a substantial literature on collective intention.  
  
David Larkin