NZ experiment

[Daniel Davies]

--- Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote: > 

> 
> By JOHN KAY
> 

Kay, btw, is what I would consider a "right guy", in
the sense of being very sound on the idiocies of
neoliberal zealotry, but understanding the mechanisms
of business and finance better than just about
anybody.  His "Foundations of Corporate Success" is
the only management textbook I would ever recommend
anybody to read, ever, for any reason, and it's the
only one that can't be summed up on the back of a
matchbook.

Justin -- Kay is bound to have a lot of useful &
intelligent things to say about efficiency of various
capital allocation schemes, because he's done a lot of
work in this area and, while nobody's idea of a
leftist, he's open minded.  I've never tried him as an
email correspondent, but he seemed helpful and
pleasant on the few occasions our paths crossed
through various LBS and BoE things I did.

Oh yeh, and he's done a few of the few things about
"stakeholding" which weren't just hot air; close to
mkt. socialism?

http://www.johnkay.com/articles/search.php?action=view&doc_id=133

--------------------

>>The idea of a firm as a collection of capabilities
contrasts with two popular and more individualistic
views of the firm. One, prevalent in US business
journalism, is that companies are essentially
extensions of larger than life chief executives –
General Electric is Jack Welch, Microsoft is Bill
Gates. The other, more widely held amongst economists,
is that we can ‘look through’ firms to the individuals
who have relationships with them. In this reductionist
view shareholders, too numerous and too busy to manage
firms themselves, hire managers to run the firm on
their behalf. These managers then make contracts with
employees, suppliers, and customers.

But companies which could be satisfactorily
characterised in either of these ways would not make
profits. Successful firms have distinctive
capabilities. The value these firms add results from
this identify and they cannot simply be defined by the
contracts they have made. In a profound sense – a
sense which is commercial and moral as well as legal –
such companies have a reality, and a value, which is
distinct from the individuals who contribute to them.

>From this perspective, it hardly makes sense to talk
about the ownership of a modern company. A large,
successful corporation is necessarily a social
institution, and would not survive if it were not.
This position has political as well as economic
implications. This leads to the economics of
"stakeholding" . <<


dd

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