

The end of management & what's next for the corporation - cbennett
http://cbennett.posterous.com/end-of-management-future-of-the-corporation
An exploration of the history and future of the corporation, inspired by a Wall Street Journal article from last year called "The End of the Management"
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egiva
Well, the "end of the corporation" has been predicted (as a fad) many times
post WWII, and I think it's an error to assume that the corporation will be
substituted for some form of "wikinomics". Corporations will always be needed
to mobilize capital for large projects (think: a steel mill or mining the
moon, etc) and the author was right to point that out. Also, there will come a
time when these "wikinomics-based" systems will be turned into platforms, much
like Facebook is a platform, and platforms inevitably become big corporations
too.

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cbennett
absolutely, it's almost unimaginable to imagine large-scale products (think a
MacBook Pro of more dramatically a 747) being autonomously created via mass-
collaboration. if you read the end of my post I agree whole-heartedly with
that limitation. what I am really guessing is that in the 21st century hybrid
organizational forms ought to embody different component of hierarchy (think
vertical) and meshwork (think vertical) at different points or functions of
output along the spectrum from creation to production in order to really adapt
to the sea-changes in the economy. what exactly do you mean by 'platform' and
why is it inevitable that these entities become large-scale corporations?
depending on how you define it wikipedia is a 'platform' and yet it remains a
501(c)3 led by a visionary, jimmy wales, and yet crowd-sourced by the masses.
you seem to have a static or monolithic image of what corporation means; a
corporation, at least in the Coasian sense, is just a conglomeration of
individual actors who decide to band together for awhile (we know all
corporations die inevitably)

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cbennett
if you are interested in thinking the company from a 'long view', definitely
check out this post: [http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08/a-brief-history-of-
the-...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08/a-brief-history-of-the-
corporation-1600-to-2100/) it was featured on HN a few months back and is
definitely a wonderful (if expansive) introduction

