Why are corporations organized like dictatorships?

Jed Porada: Are you nuts? Good CEOs do not rule like monarchs. They are elected by a board of directors, which is elected by the corporation's owners (the stockholders). CEOs are held accountable for the success of the corporation. What in the world can be more democratic than this? There are corporations where the stockholders are the employees and they elect the board as above. United Air Lines comes to mind. Small companies occasionally do this through ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plans). Since employees often have completely different agendas than owners these arrangements seldom work well. If you don't like this arrangement then you can save your money, buy a few shares of stock in the company you work for and vote for the directors, who represent your interests as well as the interests in other stockholders....Show more

Lenard Ginyard: Corporations answer to the stockholders, not to the employees. If employees elected the board of directors and the C! EO they would be out of jobs very soon because the company would be out of business.

Denna Prudente: Socialism doesn't work sparky.

An Trebil: Crowd control

Deangelo Marchak: Your terminology frames it as an emotional question rather than an objective organizational question.Businesses, successful ones at least, take various forms but nearly all do have a hierarchical structure. It’s necessary for goal setting, defining strategies, planning, programming, controlling and directing resources to get what everyone wants. The manner in which the organization operates depends on the business philosophy of the CEO or executive committee as well as the organization’s culture; kind of like ice cream coming in different flavors. Each type of organization from “top-down” all along the scale to free-wheeling “bottom-up” has advantages and disadvantages. The trick is to pick the right type of organization for the business you’re in and the people you ! have.Finally, while “democracies” sound great in the ideal! , they are often slow, misguided, unfocused, and don’t do well at fighting for survival against focused, well led, insurgencies. (But we haven’t found anything better!)...Show more

Ruthe Real: Employees do have a vote, they vote with their feet. If they dont like it, they can leave.