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Critical Accounts pp 44–63Cite as

Displacing the Corporation with Deconstructionism and Dialectics

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Abstract

In 1932 Berle and Means observed that corporations were growing so large, and their ownership so diversified, that their managers could no longer be assumed to serve the interests of the shareholders; ownership and control were becoming disconnected. Their observations raised important questions of public policy: if management is autonomous from ownership, should that autonomy be allowed to persist? And if not, in whose interest should corporations be regulated, the shareholders or some broader social constituency? Berle and Means’s concerns periodically recur in the social accounting, management and economics literature and in the political arena (for example, debates over US anti-trust policy, plant closings, and regulations concerning employment, employee health and safety, consumer product safety, pollution and so on).

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Authors
  1. Tony Tinker
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  2. Marilyn Neimark
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Alberta, Canada

    David J. Cooper (Professor of Accounting) (Professor of Accounting)

  2. University of Manchester, UK

    Trevor M. Hopper (Peat Marwick McLintock Professor of Management Accounting) (Peat Marwick McLintock Professor of Management Accounting)

Copyright information

© 1990 David J. Cooper & Trevor M. Hopper

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Tinker, T., Neimark, M. (1990). Displacing the Corporation with Deconstructionism and Dialectics. In: Cooper, D.J., Hopper, T.M. (eds) Critical Accounts. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09786-9_3

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