ABSTRACT
Fifty of the world’s hundred largest economies are companies. The 500 biggest corporations control 25% of the world’s economic output.1 These and other large businesses have power in the very important sense that their managers make choices that affect others significantly.2 The scope of this power is wide ranging:
It is true that companies’ freedom of action is constrained by the operation of product, capital, and labour markets, but within these limits there remains a large core of discretion. Company decision making is not, in other words, merely a matter of slavish obedience to market signals. Nor is corporate power being eliminated by the trend towards globalisation. Domestic companies that operate in internationally traded sectors may no longer be able to shelter from the forces of competition within national boundaries, but globalisation has, if anything, increased rather than diminished the power of the large multinationals. Economies of scale and scope and the judicious use of strategic alliances and other forms of networking ensure that these organisations operate in conditions in which competition is suitably attenuated.4
