ABSTRACT

The megacorp, as the name implies, is a large corporation, typified by the companies included in Fortune Magazine's annual directory of the 500 largest corporations. The stockholders, diffuse, lacking leadership and unable to give more than occasional thought to the affairs of the megacorp, have become passive rentiers whose major concern is the size of the dividends and/or the current market price of their shares. From the separation of management from ownership, it can thus be inferred that the overall goal of the megacorp is to grow at a maximum rate while the goal within any specific industry is to optimize its long-run market share. In addition to the separation of management from ownership, the megacorp is characterized by a divisible capital stock and fixed factor, or technical, coefficients. The megacorp's individual short-run revenue curve would thus appear to be identical to that of a polypolistic firm.