Will my Corporate State work?

[Selandia]

Another example is enforcement of company laws within the company. Is there some kind of "checks and balances" to simply enforce the company policies, notably for things like seniority, share distribution, etc. beyond "talking to the old man". If a lowly worked is getting docked pay "unfairly", who can he ultimately file a grievance with, and is there any expectation of it being listened to.

For us, there are corporate policies and chains of command, ruled by HR departments and finally overseen and working under the umbrella of local, state, and federal labor laws, and even union rules.

So, I'm just curious how this aspect is handled. What keeps the company rule from becoming (if anything) a basic dictatorship.

How modern liberal democracy evolved from tribal cheftain that ruled through muscle in the night of forgotten time? You know that libraries are full of books on the subject?

The fans of the French revolution may answer: when the Corporation is the King, you guillotine the Corporate King. What about the fear of riots and one's head on a pike?

Of course HR teachers will tell you about hiring and retaining, with top employees with rare skill been able to get bonus and move to another employer if you are unfair (that is the point where a student pick his cue and talk about slavery or serfdom as historical solution to manpower mobility and is answered by the words Guilds, underacheivement and sabotage).

My favorite theory is that while uncharismatic dictatorship may rule by sheer terror for a period of time, historical experience usually point at more cost effective mixes of economical reward, ideology and repression.

A powerfull ideology in the liberal society is the contractual ideology, the free contract: "you got what you agreed to". But it suppose that you uphold your corporate end of the bargain and have arbitration mecanism for litigation, otherwise you loose the benefit of free compliance by workers that think that things are fair that way.

Of course you may prefer a corporation that claim to reflect the City of Good and the Divine ordonancement of temporal affair.

The corporation may be a "worker's coop" with a claim to organise production for the greater good of all (but mostly for the managers). Paternalistic capitalism with work and social life organised around utopist model such as Fournier's phalanstere.

Scientific (or pseudo-scientific) model that claim to optimise production so that you may become slightly richer if you let the corporation become a lot richer

However, ideology impose constraint to the corporation that must behave according to it. It only needs to make sure that it is making profit despite the constraint.

Selandia

 

[Enoki]

Using the Earth equivalents there are really two corporate models that can be seen from history:

The company town model. Mining companies of the 18th and 19th centuries set up these. The company owns everything and everyone. They are the government as well as the only business in town. They own everything.
In operation they would generally operate as a paternalistic oligarchy. That is, they treat the employees in a way that is more like that of a child or indentured servant while the leadership of the company is determined by an elite few who hold all the power. The workers live in company housing. They buy stuff in a company store. They might even get paid in some form of company money only good at company businesses. The company sets the rules for how they live their lives. For example, they might be compelled to attend religious services regularly....or else....
One could expect the workers to be in a position where they are not allowed to opt out of their contracts early, are often in debt to the company and have to pay off before quitting, that sort of thing.

The other is the megacorp that allows a seperate government to function but essentially still has the actual power to make rules and run many things. In this model they let the government do all the distastful and distracting parts of governing like law enforcement and running the legal system. These, of course, ignore the corporation's management doing stuff that is questionable while keeping the rank and file in order.
In this model the corporation puts on a air of concern and legitimacy with the public and even its own workers. But, behind the scenes they do what they want. So long as the government leadership gets their cut they don't interfere. Workers in this model are not beholden to the corporation necessarily and the corporation allows other businesses that they are not in to set up shop and supply their wares to the workers and even the corporation. They may or may not put limits on who and how many of these companies are allowed to operate.