What's a Firm, What's a Corporation, and Why Does It Matter?

To understand how corporate activity is changing our economies and societies, we need to distinguish how they organize through bodies of law. In general parlance, the words firm, corporation, and company are used interchangeably. This is a matter of convenience but masks how firms, as organizing units, articulate their activities through corporations as legal entities that offer them affordances. This article reviews the literature in sociolegal studies, sociology, political economy, institutional economics, and accounting studies that considers what is at stake in the firm/corporation distinction. A new way to combine their insights is offered, locating how firms use bodies of law to replicate corporate strategies and structural asymmetries in the world economy.