Taming Corporate Power in the 21st Century

There is broad consensus in the US that monopolistic corporations have grown too powerful and that we need to revive antitrust to take on the “curse of bigness.” But information and communication technologies have fundamentally altered the operations of our economy in ways that undermine the basic categories we use to understand it. Nationality, industry, firm, size, employee, and other fundamental terms are increasingly perplexing. If we want to understand and tame the new sources of economic power, we need a new diagnosis and a new set of tools. This talk describes the forces shaping corporate power in America today, and where we might go next.

Jerry Davis received his PhD from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and taught at Northwestern and Columbia before moving to the University of Michigan, where he is the Gilbert and Ruth Whitaker Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Sociology. He writes about corporate power, the threats to democracy posed by Big Tech, and the possibilities for alternative forms of enterprise that are more humane and democratic.