ABSTRACT
In everyday language, as well as in academic discourse, we often speak of collective entities like business firms, voluntary associations, political parties or governments as if they are acting and decision-making units, much like individual human beings. We say, for instance, that governments take actions, that business corporations pursue strategies, or that universities decide on policies, as if governments, corporations or universities were endowed with a capacity that we normally attribute to individual persons, namely the capacity to choose and to act. The question of what significance we ought to ascribe to this use of language has long been a central issue in the controversy between advocates and opponents of the principle of methodological individualism.
