Evidence continues to grow that the hierarchical, multidivisional corporation of the twentieth century— with its enormous managerial and executive costs, its monopoly market goals, its mixtures of empowerment and authoritarianism, its definitions of value that exclude social benefits—is less functional and affordable than most leaders had assumed (D. Gordon 1996; Ross 1997; Bamberger and Davidson 1999). And yet, any process of inventing postcorporate economic forms would require deeper public knowledge of corporate operations than prevails in the wealthy countries of the early twenty-first century, as well as clearer, more imaginative definitions of democratic economics.

This is an excerpt from Christopher Newfield’s entry in Keywords for American Cultural Studies (p. 71).