The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea

This really was a fascinating read into the evolution of companies into the corporations we know today. This gives the full global view of how stock holding companies became the modern corporation. Excellent!

There aren't nearly enough titles available on this topic, yet Micklethwait & Wooldridge manage to fit a comprehensive history of limited liability joint stock companies into 256 pages. Well worth the read whether you're new to the topic or returning from other historical travels.

This short book was simply excellent. The authors, who both work at "The Economist" fill this volume with a pithy, well researched, global history of the joint-stock corporation. They take us from early partnership agreements in 3000BC through the rise of big business in America, Britain, Germany and Japan, to the emergence of powerful multinationals. The authors definitely have very slight, pro-corporation slant, but not annoyingly so. They simply emphasize that corporations have improved productivity and lifted standards of living, and leave the many anti-corporate arguments to others. But given that the corporation has risen to be a such a large influence in society, eclipsing states, politics, and church, understanding the history of the corporation may be important as knowing the history of our nation. I found the topic interesting, and the book to be well researched, insightful, and well written. Therefore, I recommend this book highly. The book covers a lot of ground, and below is a summary of some of the topics covered. The pre-history of the corporation begins with the Sumerians & the Assyrians, who negotiated contracts and had partnership agreements. The origins of more formal corporate law, however, can be traced back to the Romans. By the 16th century, large corporations such as the East India company & Hudson Bay company existed; these were monopolies chartered by royal governments to grab the riches of the new worlds opened by Columbus, Magellan, and Vasco da Gama. In this era, few corporate charters were granted by governments. Furthermore, those corporations were restricted to the task they were chartered for. Typically, these were for public projects such as canals, toll bridges, turnpikes. All that changed in the mid 1800's. With the landmark Joint Stock Companies Act in 1856 in Britain, companies didn't have to be chartered by the state, but could incorporate simply by registering with the state. Corporations were free to do as they wished. They also were granted limited legal liability, so investors could be held liable for no more than their investment. This landmark legal action was the start of the modern corporation. Limited liability proved to be immensely attractive to investors, and some said it was the greatest single discovery of modern times. Indeed, it attracted a flood of capital to the first major corporations, such as the railroads. The railroads were the first modern businesses; they required huge amounts of capital, and large armies of managers to administer an entire transportation network. The ability to sell shares allowed capital to be collected, and railroad shares this drove the growth of the NY Stock exchange. Also during this period, large corporations began to merge, and/or to be held under an umbrella corporation using laws for "trusts." The monopolistic practices of these trusts, like Standard Oil Trust, led to modern anti-trust laws. Corporations themselves began to evol

There are few creatures more vilified in today's world than corporations. For some, companies are the instruments of evil, they exist to profit at the expense of ordinary people, and their chief executives are defamed for their greed and ambition. All the same, most people live off the checks they receive from those evil beasts; and, being the CEO of a large company offers comparable prestige with other esteemed professions. Wrestling with these competing images of corporations is part of what "The Company" aims at. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, both of The Economist, embark on an ambitious project to show that the corporation lies at the heart and center of organized societies-more so than the state, the commune, the political party, the church, and others.Having put modesty aside, the authors deliver on their promise with great skill, both literary and scholarly. All pervasive in their narrative is a deep sense of historical perspective-of contrasting the companies of today with those of the past. This need of putting the present in context is extremely valuable in canvassing the role that corporations (and particularly multinationals) play in the world today. Several themes emerge in this historical journey. The first is the evolution of the company itself through a continuous political debate about its role and place in society. A second charts the different attitudes that societies have had towards companies; in particular the authors focus on the United States, Britain, Germany and Japan. At the heart of this book is the dialectic between society and company; the Virginia Company, for example, effectively introduced democracy in America in 1619. This helps explains why Americans have been more receptive to companies that have other countries. This is one of countless examples in the book that chronicle the immense impact that companies have had the world over. "The Company" not only explains the historical arguments that have been front and center of the debate about the role that companies should play, but it also captures the timeless forces that have shaped, and are likely to keep shaping, the debate in the future. Certainly a book no one would like to miss.

Here we have an examination of what seems to be, at first glance, a less-than-exciting subject: the limited-liability joint-stock company. Ah, but that first impression is soon proven false by what indeed is a fascinating, at times riveting (albeit brief) history of what Micklethwait and Wooldridge correctly suggest has been and remains, since the Companies Act of 1862, "the basis of the prosperity of the West and the best hope for the future of the world." Soon becoming the single most powerful economic power, the limited-liability joint-stock company combined the three big ideas behind the modern company: "that it could be an artificial person," with the same ability to do business as a real person; that it could issue tradable shares to any number of investors; and that those investors could have limited liability (so they could lose only the money they had committed to the firm)." Although Micklethwait and Wooldridge do indeed provide "a short history of a revolutionary idea," their book is remarkably comprehensive as it traces the evolution of commercial structure from merchants and monopolists (3000 B.C. -- 1500) through imperialists and speculators (1500-1750) and the "prolonged and painful birth" of the limited-liability joint-stock company (1750-1862) before shifting their and the reader's attention to the rise of big business in America (1862-1913), the rise of big business in Britain, Germany, and Japan (1850-1950), the triumph of managerial capitalism (1913-1975), and what they characterize as "the corporate paradox" (1975-2002) before examining "agents of influence: multinationals (1850-2002) in the final chapter. All this, and done very well indeed, in less than 200 pages! For those interested in further study of any/all of the periods and subjects they discuss, Micklethwait and Wooldridge provide an exceptionally informative "Bibliographic Note" section, followed by all of the footnotes in which additional recommendations are included.Congratulations to Micklethwait and Wooldridge on what I consider to be a brilliant achievement, one which combines scholarship of the highest order with narrative skills worthy of Austen, Thackeray, and Dickens.