The origin of the modern company
It all started in the second half of the 20th century, in the middle of the Industrial Revolution . The man had learned to modify raw materials to form secondary consumer goods , as he had done it in an artisanal way with medieval companies, such as the Guipuzcoana Company and the West India Company. But now he was also learning to do it fast and en masse . The first factories, the first distribution networks, the first railways.
In this context, the modern company was born, legally understood as the joint-stock company : a private bureaucratic structure, directed by salaried managers and with a mass of workers at their service, put at the service of a profit-seeking objective. The first arose in England, linked to the railway trade , but Germany and the United States did not take long to reproduce the example.
In the latter country, by the way, the railway companies hired for the first time a manager, in charge of ensuring their operation and expansion, thus achieving decentralization of their model , much more in the style of large contemporary companies. His European sisters, on the other hand, preferred a more centralist model.
This difference in models allowed that at the end of the First World War, North American companies, accustomed to a model that deals with the enormous distances of their territory, knew how to take the first step towards multinationalization , opening their first branches on European soil and, later, Latin American.
The starting point of modern capitalism
This is how a new workplace arises in the modern world: the factory , and a new social class: the proletariat . All this profound change in structures will build the foundations for what will later become the contemporary world: from Marxism to hypertechnologization , modern capitalism begins in this historical period.
But first, free enterprise will have to overcome the trauma of World War II and the stain left on German corporations by the slave labor of Nazism. German companies such as IG Farben, Volkswagen and many others took part and benefited from the forced labor camps in which the Nazi regime, in its logical and rational vocation for horror, subjected different peoples that it considered to be "inferior".
Thus, together with the subsequent North American interventionism through business franchises and arms sales policies, a bad reputation was created during the 20th century that would accompany the business world for decades .
The triumph, however, of the company as a mode of association to generate wealth will prevail and at the end of the century free enterprise will be a key piece of the industrial and economic development of nations , taking a vital participation in the development of financial markets and a some fairness in world standards of living. And promoting, in doing so, a new social figure that mediates between the owners of capital and the working proletariat : the managerial class.
A look in the rear-view mirror
It doesn't hurt a bit of historical context for corporate thinking, right? This is the only way to have a more complete perspective of the historical moment itself, and that is vital when undertaking, growing as a company or smelling new opportunities in the air.
see also finance and business knowledge
