Title: The firm and corporative governmentality. From the perspective of Foucault

Authors: Eduardo Rivera Vicencio

Addresses: Faculty of Economics and Business Studies, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Edificio B Campus de la UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain

Abstract: The fundamental base of this paper is the work of Michel Foucault and specifically during the period 1978-1979 at the Collège de France (The Birth of Biopolitics). The paper describes the relationship of power in institutional firms from the point of view of archaeological and genealogical methods, such as discourse, discipline, ethics and governmentality. Through this description, the characteristics of a new form of government - corporate governmentality - are determined and how they in turn shape the current homo economicus, the subject of law and economics in firms. At the same time, the paper describes how there has been a misappropriation of rents over time, how it is shaping a block of countries to appropriate the rents of others through large firms, and how these large corporations are imposing their objectives on states and international organisations, generating government corporations globally or what is described in this paper, as the characteristics of corporate governmentality.

Keywords: institutional firms; Michel Foucault; corporate governmentality; power relationships; ethics; rent appropriation; discourse; discipline; neo-liberalism; profit maximisation; law; economics; government corporations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEA.2014.067421

International Journal of Economics and Accounting, 2014 Vol.5 No.4, pp.281 - 305

Published online: 14 Feb 2015 *

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