THE CORPORATION explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Footage from pop culture, advertising, TV news, and corporate propaganda, illuminates the corporation\'s grip on our lives. Taking its legal status as a \"person\" to its logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist\'s couch to ask \"What kind of person is it?\" Provoking, witty, sweepingly informative, The Corporation includes forty interviews with corporate insiders and critics - including Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.
Winner of 24 INTERNATIONAL AWARDS, 10 of them AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS including the AUDIENCE AWARD for DOCUMENTARY in WORLD CINEMA at the 2004 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL.
A LEGAL \"PERSON\"
In the mid-1800s the corporation emerged as a legal \"person.\" Imbued with a \"personality\" of pure self-interest, the next 100 years saw the corporation\'s rise to dominance. The corporation created unprecedented wealth. But at what cost? The remorseless rationale of \"externalities\"-as Milton Friedman explains: the unintended consequences of a transaction between two parties on a third-is responsible for countless cases of illness, death, poverty, pollution, exploitation and lies.
THE PATHOLOGY OF COMMERCE: CASE HISTORIES
To more precisely assess the \"personality\" of the corporate \"person,\" a checklist is employed, using actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the DSM-IV, the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social \"personality\": It is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. Four case studies, drawn from a universe of corporate activity, clearly demonstrate harm to workers, human health, animals and the biosphere. Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a \"psychopath.\"
MINDSET
But what is the ethical mindset of corporate players? Should the institution or the individuals within it be held responsible?
The people who work for corporations may be good people, upstanding citizens in their communities - but none of that matters when they enter the corporation\'s world. As Sam Gibara, Former CEO and Chairman of Goodyear Tire, explains, \"If you really had a free hand, if you really did what you wanted to do that suited your personal thoughts and your personal priorities, you\'d act differently.\"
Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, the world\'s largest commercial carpet manufacturer, had an environmental epiphany and re-organized his $1.4 billion company on sustainable principles. His company may be a beacon of corporate hope, but is it an exception to the rule?
- MONSTROUS OBLIGATIONS
- PLANET INC
- PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT
- THE PRICE OF WHISTLEBLOWING
- DEMOCRACY LTD
- FISSURES
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