Company (novel)

Last updated
Company
Company(novel).jpg
Company novel cover
Author Max Barry
LanguageEnglish
Genre Novel, Satire
Published17 January 2006 Doubleday
Publication placeAustralia
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback) & e-book
Pages336 pp (hardcover edition)
ISBN 0-385-51439-5 (hardcover edition)
OCLC 60589155
813/.54 22
LC Class PS3552.A7424 C66 2006
Preceded by Jennifer Government  
Followed by Machine Man  

Company is a 2006 novel by Max Barry. It is Barry's third published novel, following Jennifer Government in 2003. The novel is set in a modern corporation.

Contents

Plot summary

Set in Seattle at a company called Zephyr Holdings Incorporated, the plot is centered in a drab building from which it is difficult to discern the company's type of business. The company's defining characteristic is its obscurity and its heavy reliance on corporate jargon, through which it avoids hard truths and harsh realities.

Stephen Jones, a young graduate, reports for his first day in the Training Sales Department shortly after there has been a theft of a precious resource in the office, a doughnut. Among the overarching plot-lines, Roger's assumption of the role of detective in solving the mystery of the missing doughnut stretches the length of the plot. Jones is promoted from assistant to acting sales representative on the whim of his manager, over the heads of his far more experienced colleagues. As time passes and the inanities mount, Jones comes to believe in the existence of a conspiracy, given the logical fallacies of his work, selling orders to different floors of the same company. A meeting with upper management is impossible without an appointment, an appointment is impossible without the consent of mid-level managers, and managers fire anyone who ask questions outside the lines of preferred company policy. Employees are shuffled about at random or outsourced in cost-cutting maneuvers, and the theme of cost-consolidation is heavy throughout.

Reaching the CEO's floor by using a locked staircase, Jones reaches the epiphany necessary to pierce the veil of the sham that is Zephyr: the CEO's floor is the empty roof, and the real work behind the scenes takes place on the unreachable floor 13. The CEO, Daniel Klausman, poses as a lowly janitor ordinarily but secretly orchestrates lab-based tests on the employees of Zephyr in order to best reach maximum efficiency in a corporate environment. A select group of people, known as the Alphas, remain in Zephyr to analyze if their strategies result in perceivable results, and Jones finds himself swept into the Alphas. The main revenue stream comes from the sale of the Omega Management System series of corporate self-help books, based on the results of the studies done on the Zephyr employees.

Disgusted by its inhumanity and its dedication to impossible and cruel ideals, Jones resolves to bring down the Alpha group and thus Zephyr Holdings from within. Simultaneously, he is both heavily attracted to the beautiful Eve Jantiss and repulsed by her open cynicism towards the employees of Zephyr and her easy disregard for common ethics in the corporate environment. Left to its own ends, Zephyr Holdings continuously down-sizes in cost-saving moves, only to be confused when the company's costs rise per person since there are fewer employees. This spirals out of control until Zephyr holdings becomes a tribal battleground, with each executive seizing the best parts of the pie to control and manipulate, leaving a bloated Senior Management with absurdly small number of actual employees. Sick of the rampant ineptitude and trimming which leaves only the incompetent and corrupt working, Jones organizes a revolt with the remaining employees to force the Senior Management to resign, to which the Alpha group is powerless to respond lest it reveal its actual, devious purpose. However, although left without a head and most of its limbs, the Alpha group continues to believe that the experiment of the Zephyr Corporation does not need to be cancelled and can remain viable. In a final act of defiance, Jones links the secret floor 13 with the rest of the building so all the employees can read the files made about them and tests done to ascertain minute results. Infuriated, the Zephyr Corporation employees riot and storm floor 13, resulting in the implosion of the fake company.

In the aftermath of the fall of Zephyr Holdings Incorporated, Jones and Eve meet again, finding that the two of them never really changed, with the latter bemusedly certain that Corporations would not be able to learn from their own mistakes, and the former adamant that the most essential part of the company was not its profits but the people that made up its lifeblood, the employees.

Characters in Company

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

Universal Pictures has acquired screen rights to the novel, which Steve Pink will adapt. Tom Shadyac and Michael Bostick will produce the film through Shady Acres.

Related Research Articles

Corporate titles or business titles are given to corporate officers to show what duties and responsibilities they have in the organization. Such titles are used by publicly and privately held for-profit corporations, cooperatives, non-profit organizations, educational institutions, partnerships, and sole proprietorships that also confer corporate titles.

A vice president or vice-president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on the executive branch of the government, university or company. The name comes from the Latin term vice meaning "in place of" and typically serves as pro tempore to the president. In some countries, the vice president is called the deputy president. In everyday speech, the abbreviation VP is used.

In a corporation, a stakeholder is a member of "groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist", as defined in the first usage of the word in a 1963 internal memorandum at the Stanford Research Institute. The theory was later developed and championed by R. Edward Freeman in the 1980s. Since then it has gained wide acceptance in business practice and in theorizing relating to strategic management, corporate governance, business purpose and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The definition of corporate responsibilities through a classification of stakeholders to consider has been criticized as creating a false dichotomy between the "shareholder model" and the "stakeholder model", or a false analogy of the obligations towards shareholders and other interested parties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMR Corporation</span> Defunct airline holding company

AMR Corporation was an airline holding company based in Fort Worth, Texas, which was the parent company of American Airlines, American Eagle Airlines, AmericanConnection and Executive Airlines. AMR filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2011. The company emerged from bankruptcy on December 9, 2013, and at the same time announced that it would merge with US Airways Group to form a new company, American Airlines Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salomon Brothers</span> Former American investment bank

Salomon Brothers, Inc., was an American multinational bulge bracket investment bank headquartered in New York City. It was one of the five largest investment banking enterprises in the United States and a very profitable firm on Wall Street during the 1980s and 1990s. Its CEO and chairman at that time, John Gutfreund, was nicknamed "the King of Wall Street".

Corporate manslaughter is a criminal offence in English law, being an act of homicide committed by a company or organisation. In general, in English criminal law, a juristic person is in the same position as a natural person, and may be convicted for committing many offences. The Court of Appeal confirmed in one of the cases following the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster that a company can, in principle, commit manslaughter, although all defendants in that case were acquitted.

A retail manager is the person ultimately responsible for the day-to-day operations of a retail store. All employees working in the store report to the retail/store manager. A store manager reports to a district/area or general manager.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">B. Kevin Turner</span> American businessman and investor (born 1965)

B. Kevin Turner is an American businessman and investor who is the chairman of Zayo Group and the vice chairman of Albertsons/Safeway Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bridgewater Associates</span> U.S. based investment management firm

Bridgewater Associates, LP is an American investment management firm founded by Ray Dalio in 1975. The firm serves institutional clients including pension funds, endowments, foundations, foreign governments, and central banks. As of 2022, Bridgewater has posted the second highest gains of any hedge fund since its inception in 1975. The firm began as an institutional investment advisory service, graduated to institutional investing, and pioneered the risk parity investment approach in 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonoco</span> United States-based international provider of diversified consumer packaging

Sonoco Products Company is an American provider of diversified consumer packaging, industrial products, protective packaging, and packaging supply chain services and the world's largest producer of composite cans, tubes, and cores. The company was founded in 1889 as Southern Novelty Company with annualized net sales of approximately $7.3 billion. Sonoco has 19,900 employees in more than 335 operations in 33 countries, serving more than 85 nations. The company is headquartered in Hartsville, South Carolina, and is South Carolina's largest corporation in terms of sales.

Intrapreneurship is the act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization. Intrapreneurship is known as the practice of a corporate management style that integrates risk-taking and innovation approaches, as well as the reward and motivational techniques, that are more traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship. Corporate entrepreneurship is a more general term referring to entrepreneurial actions taking place within an existing organization whereas Intrapreneurship refers to individual activities and behaviors.

Shaw Industries Group, Inc. is one of the world's largest carpet manufacturers with more than $6 billion in annual revenue and approximately 22,000 employees worldwide. It is headquartered in Dalton, Georgia, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.

A hotel manager, hotelier, or lodging manager is a person who manages the operation of a hotel, motel, resort, or other lodging-related establishment. Management of a hotel operation includes, but is not limited to management of hotel staff, business management, upkeep and sanitary standards of hotel facilities, guest satisfaction and customer service, marketing management, sales management, revenue management, financial accounting, purchasing, and other functions. The title "hotel manager" or "hotelier" often refers to the hotel's general manager who serves as a hotel's head executive, though their duties and responsibilities vary depending on the hotel's size, purpose, and expectations from ownership. The hotel's general manager is often supported by subordinate department managers that are responsible for individual departments and key functions of the hotel operations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forum Corporation</span>

The Forum Corporation is a learning and consulting company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Management Association</span> Professional membership association

The American Management Association (AMA) is an American non-profit educational membership organization for the promotion of management, based in New York City. Besides its headquarters there, it has local head offices throughout the world.

Staff management is the management of subordinates in an organization. Often, large organizations have many of these functions performed by a specialist department, such as personnel or human resources, but all line managers are still required to supervise and administer the activities and ensure the well-being of the staff that report to them.

<i>Kamikaze 1989</i> 1982 film

Kamikaze 1989 is a 1982 West German cyberpunk thriller film co-written and directed by Wolf Gremm, based on the 1964 novel Murder on the Thirty-First Floor by Per Wahlöö. It stars Rainer Werner Fassbinder as a detective investigating a string of bombings that lead to a corporate media conspiracy. The soundtrack was composed by Tangerine Dream founder Edgar Froese.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Director (business)</span> Title given to the senior management staff of a large organization

The term director is a title given to the senior management staff of businesses and other large organizations.

While psychopaths typically represent a very small percentage of workplace staff, the presence of psychopathy in the workplace, especially within senior management, can do enormous damage. Indeed, psychopaths are usually most present at higher levels of corporate structure, and their actions often cause a ripple effect throughout an organization, setting the tone for an entire corporate culture. Examples of detrimental effects include increased bullying, conflict, stress, staff turnover, absenteeism, and reduction in both productivity and social responsibility. Ethical standards of entire organisations can be badly damaged if a corporate psychopath is in charge. A 2017 UK study found that companies with leaders who show "psychopathic characteristics" destroy shareholder value, tending to have poor future returns on equity.

References