ABSTRACT
As we saw in the last chapter, and quoting once again from Lindblom, in a private-enterprise market economy “a large category of major decisions”— decisions about the production and distribution of goods and services that dramatically aect the well-being of entire communities and the individuals who reside within them-“is turned over to businessmen . . . and a broad area of public-decision making is removed from polyarchal [that is, democratic] control.” us the consequences of corporate decisions are public but the individuals who make those decisions-those who govern the corporation-are not accountable to the various publics, including the workers and consumers, who are inevitably aected by their decisions. How then are corporations governed? In theory (publicly traded) corporations are controlled by the individuals who own shares in those corporations: the stockholders elect a Board of Directors, whose responsibility, in turn, is to appoint the managers or executive ocers of the corporation and to oversee their performance. us, although the managers make all the important decisions about the production of goods and services oered by the corporation, the managers are, in principle, accountable to a body-the Board of Directors-that is, in turn, accountable to the legal owners-the shareholders-of the corporation. In principle, but, as Doug Henwood’s Wall Street amply demonstrates, the practice is in fact very dierent from the principle.
