BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL CORPORATIONS


The postmodern world is characterized by multinational corporations. It is important that we study them in-depth as key institutional practitioners in postmodernity. At the same time, theorists place multinational capital accumulation at the epicenter of postmodern theory. While this practice is pursued in institutional frameworks, the central importance of it seems to elevate it beyond institutions. The rhizomatic character of postmodern space may be at play in this problem. Institutions as such are not required to be all that "real" in postmodernity. The theory of multinational capital may arise as an epiphenomenon of the operation of virtual organizations. But this is a mere speculation, which calls for further analysis of theory-vs.-practice.. Here we link references that, for the most part, stay within the realm of practice.


References from the World Wide Web

Bowen, Kent, Kim Clark, Charles Holloway, & Steven Wheelwright, eds. The Perpetual Enterprise Machine: Seven Keys to Corporate Renewal Through Successful Product and Process Development
See note below under Bibliographic References.

VideoBridge International. A commercial communication company specializing in links to post-Cold-War Russia illustrates the characteristics of the postmodern, global business assemblage.

Kroker and Weinstein, The Political Economy of Virtual Reality

Dan Schubert, Postmodern Culture, Global Capitalism, and Democratic Action
The Couch-Stone Symposium of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction on 10-13 April 1997 dealt with the emerging culture accompanying the evolution of the global economy.

Bibliographic References

Bowen, Kent, Kim Clark, Charles Holloway, & Steven Wheelwright, eds. The Perpetual Enterprise Machine: Seven Keys to Corporate Renewal Through Successful Product and Process Development
This is the outcome of 26 people from nine business and academic institutions, collaborating in an effort to define what approaches result in effective product and process development.

Steven Goldman et al, Agile Competitors and Virtual Organizations
In the continuous state of change and uncertainty in postmodernity, corporations have changed from hierarchical, self-contained entities in order to cope successfully with agile competition. A keynote of this change is that they can cooperate with competitors through virtual organizations that require little capital investment and can come and go with the coming and going of market demand.

Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society
A basic change in society and in the nation state has led to the privileging of knowledge as the primary economic value. This leads to a different kind of productivity in ways that are still coming into focus.

David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity
The political and economic transformation of late twentieth-century capitalism rendered obsolete the "Fordist" model of capital accumulation and led to "flexible accumulation." Corporate structure and behavior altered accordingly.

References from the PROGRAMME

Corporate Enterprise as Postmodern Practice, an essay from THE PROGRAMME.
In an uncertain, ever-changing evironment, with a newly agile style of operating, postmodern corporations are less mediated by the state and less likely, short-term, to contribute direct solutions to social problems that emerge from the conditons of postmodernity.

The Corporate Annual Report, an essay from THE PROGRAMME.
An artifact of the age of agile competition, the corporate annual report reflects global, postmodern corporate enterprise. The characteristics of agility are exemplified in the reports of Safeguard Scientifics, Inc., and Coherent Communications Systems Corporation.


10 January 1996; updated 9 April 1997
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