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Origins of the Corporate Executive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Cyril O'Donnell
Affiliation:
University of California at Los Angeles

Extract

One of the recurring problems in the study of management theory concerns the authority relationships between stockholders, officers, and directors of corporations. The power centers in the corporate form of enterprise are quite different from those that obtain in an individual proprietorship and in a partnership. In addition, many differences between these types of legal organizations may be noted as one considers them from the point of view of the source of executive authority or from the viewpoint of statute law and its interpretations.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1952

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References

1 On this point see Radin, Max, Legislation of the Greeks and Romans on Corportions (New York, 1909), p. 97.Google Scholar

2 Lappenberg, J. M., A History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, trans. Thorpe, Benjamin (London, 1845), vol. i, p. 36.Google Scholar

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7 The stages by which a true corporation emerges have been well stated by Max Radin, op. cit., p. x, as follows: “We have first the individual persons, then a loose association of several of them to accomplish a temporary and definite end. As the end grows in importance and permanence the association becomes more fixed in its forms. Ultimately the end transcends the lives of the individual persons, becomes more important than the latter, and where these facts are recognized by the law, is invested with a distinct and new personality. Then and not till then, the true corporation arises.”

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15 Ibid., p. 32. (Italics in quotation are mine.)

16 Quoted by J. M. Lambert, op. cit., p. 105.

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