Corporations, Democracy, and the Public Good

Organizational theorists have had much to say about how environments affect organizations but have said relatively little about how organizations shape their environment. This silence is particularly troubling, given that organizations, in general, and corporations, in particular, now wield inordinate political power. This article illustrates three ways in which corporations can undermine representative democracy and the public good: promoting legislation that benefits corporations at the expense of individual citizens, the capturing of regulatory agencies by those whom the agencies were designed to regulate, and the privatization of functions that have historically been the mandate of local, state, and federal governments.