Can an Economy Survive Without Corporations? Technology and Robust Organizational Alternatives

Shareholder-owned corporations were dominant for much of the 20th century in the United States, yet their numbers are substantially declining in the 21st. This article argues that we are observing a regime shift in the transaction costs of organizing that disfavors traditional corporations. Accompanying this shift is the emergence of low-cost, small-scale production technologies that will allow locally based universal fabrication facilities. In combination, these changes are compatible with new forms of non-corporate enterprise. While corporations are basic units of production in many theories about the economy, they should be regarded as only one hypothesis about how production is and can be organized. Traditional alternatives to the corporation include producer and consumer cooperatives (e.g., Land o’ Lakes, REI) and mutuals (e.g., State Farm, Vanguard). More recent possibilities include commons-based peer production (such as Linux and Wikipedia) and “platforms” that connect buyers and sellers (such as Uber and Airbnb). The raw materials are available for more democratic and locally oriented enterprise. Management scholarship has an opportunity to document and encourage this movement.