The Formative Years of the Modern Corporation: The Dutch East India Company VOC, 1602-1623
成果类型：
Article
署名作者：
Utrecht University; Erasmus University Rotterdam; Erasmus University Rotterdam - Excl Erasmus MC; University of Groningen; University of Amsterdam
刊物名称：
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
ISSN/ISSBN：
0022-0507
DOI：
10.1017/S0022050713000879
发表日期：
2013
页码：
1050-1076
关键词：
摘要：
With their legal personhood, permanent capital, transferable shares, separation of ownership and management, and limited liability, the Dutch and English colonial trading companies VOC and EIC are considered institutional breakthroughs. We analyze the VOC's business operations and financial policy and show that its novel corporate form owed less to foresight than to piecemeal engineering to remedy design flaws. The crucial feature of managerial limited liability was not, as previously thought, integral to that design, but emerged only after protracted experiments with various solutions to the company's financial bottlenecks. Legal form followed economic function, not the other way around.