The ownership of enterprise / Henry Hansmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hansmann, Henry.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Corporations--United States.

Corporations.

Mutualism.

United States.

Business enterprises--United States.

Business enterprises.

Nonprofit organizations--United States.

Nonprofit organizations.

Private companies--United States.

Private companies.

Employee ownership--United States.

Employee ownership.

Stock ownership--United States.

Stock ownership.

Mutualism--United States.

Corporation law--United States.

Corporation law.

Physical Description:

xi, 372 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996.

Summary:

The investor-owned corporation is the conventional form for structuring large-scale enterprise in market economies. But it is not the only one. Even in the United States, noncapitalist firms play a vital role in many sectors. Employee-owned firms have long been prominent in the service professions - law, accounting, investment banking, medicine - and are becoming increasingly important in other industries. Farmer-owned producer cooperativese dominate the market for most basic agricultural commodities. Consumer-owned utilities provide electricity to one out of eight households. Occupant-owned condominiums and cooperatives are rapidly displacing investor-owned rental housing. Mutual companies owned by their policy-holders sell half of all life insurance and a quarter of all property and liability insurance. And nonprofit firms, which have no owners at all, account for 90 percent of all nongovernmental schools and colleges, two-thirds of all hospitals, half of all daycare centers, and a quarter of all nursing homes. Henry Hansmann explores the reasons for this diverse pattern of ownership. He explains why different industries and different national economies exhibit different distributions of ownership forms. The key to the success of a particular form, he shows, depends on the balance between the costs of contracting in the market and the costs of ownership. And he examines how this balance is affected by history and by the legal and regulatory framework within which firms are organized.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-363) and index.

ISBN:

0674649702

OCLC:

34839783