ABSTRACT
The industrial enterprise by necessity represents a large concentration of power, of capital investment and of people. The very bigness of the modern enterprise makes its stability and preservation a concern of society. The economic loss to society from a dispersal of the resources of the big enterprise would be tremendous. Bigness has profoundly changed the relationship between enterprise and employee from one that was predominantly economic to one that is primarily political and social. The enterprise by necessity requires a large, long-term capital investment. The enterprise controls the access to the productive organization, without which the individual is unable to produce. The authority in the enterprise exercises regular governmental functions. The governmental and the social functions must be most important to the member of the enterprise. The enterprise, finally, discharges social functions. It contains the plant community, which in an industrial society is the distinctive and representative social unit.
