What Do Corporations Want?: Communicative Capitalism, Corporate Purpose, and a New Theory of the Firm

Front Cover
What Do Corporations Want?: Communicative Capitalism, Corporate Purpose, and a New Theory of the Firm
Copyright information
Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
	What’s the problem here?
	The question of multiplicity
	The stakes
	Illustrating purpose multiplicity
		The British East India Company
		Anglo American Mining Company
		The lessons of the cases and the question of authority
	Why a theory of the firm? The stakes, take 2
	Preview of the book
	Notes
1 New Forms of Value Generation Under Communicative Capitalism
	The ascendancy of communicative capitalism
		A new ‘spirit’ of capitalism
	Capitalism’s communicative spirit
		Affect capture
		Platformization
			Branding
		Conclusion
	Toward responsive theory
		Conceptual considerations
		Countering correspondence
	Notes
2 Why an Alternative Theory of the Firm?
	Governance approaches
		Transaction cost economics
		Agency Theory
		Critique of governance approaches
	Competence/capability approaches
		The resource-based view
		Dynamic capabilities
		The attention-based view
		Critique of competence approaches
	Criteria for an alternative theory of the firm
	Notes
3 Assembling an Analytical Apparatus: CCO Encounters Deleuzian New Materialism
	Communication as constitutive of organization
	New materialism(s) and CCO theorizing
		Hybridizing agency
		Two tenets of the new materialism(s)
			An ontological break
			From matter to materializing
			Conclusion
	Communicatively constituting the assemblage
		Difference and the virtual
		Assemblage and agency
			Territorialization via coding and connection
			Arborescent and rhizomatic organizing
			But … why?
			Conclusion of assemblage and agency thinking
		Attracting attachments
	Conclusion
	Notes
4 A Communicative Theory of the Firm
	Why do firms exist?
	Coding as a firm part I: how firms operate
		Authority in the authority machine
			Promises of value
				Prophecy
				Gravity
			Claims to property
				Corporate form
				Logic(s) of practice
		Authoritative texts
		What authoritative texts accomplish: boundarying, branding, and binding
			Boundarying
			Branding
			Binding
		Summary
	Coding as a firm part II: the pursuit of profitability
	Coding as a firm part III: what do corporations want?
		What does it mean to want?
		Authoritative texts and the arts of attachment
	Conclusion
	Notes
5 Boundarying: Inclusion and Exclusion in Dynamic Capability (Re)Development
	Boundarying
	(Re)claiming competencies at Metro Airways
	Authoring the authoritative text
		Metro values ‘soft’ skills
		Metro fears dissipating distinctiveness
		Metro cares for its employees
		Summary
	Dis/organizational consequences of Metro’s authoritative text
		Pressure on front-line supervisors
		Disruption by IROPs
		Summary
	Implications for a Communicative Theory of the Firm
	Notes
6 Branding: Hindering Heterarchy in a Startup Accelerator
	Orders of worth in entrepreneurship
	Accelerating entrepreneurship
		The rise of entrepreneurship accelerators
		The AmpVille case
	Branding AmpVille, branding startups
		Valorizing the technologically cool
		Valorizing mentorship
		Valorizing funding
		Summary
	Conclusion
	Notes
7 Binding: Collective Atomization and B Corps
	Benefit Corporations as platforms
	B Corps and making firms want: forms of binding
		Participating in purpose
		Narrativizing materiality
	The product of B Corp practices: collective atomization
		Forms of binding and firms’ wanting
		Disrupting arborescence
	Conclusion
	Notes
8 A New Future for the Theory of the Firm
	The Coinbase case
		Connecting Coinbase and the CTF
		Illustrating the CTF’s worth
	Encapsulating the argument
	Inducing rhizomatic imagination: the CTF’s claims for firms becoming other
		The digital undertow
		Dwelling in the natural realm
		Becoming advocate
		Summary
	A final word
References
Index