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