Book Review
The Asymmetric Society
Xiang
How to understand the rapid social change and its effect on the average individuals?
Coleman’s Asymmetric Society gives us some directions. In this book, Coleman describes
to us a view of the changing organizational structures of society and the implications of
these emerging structures for the lives of ordinary people. Comparing to some ideas that
certain external forces change the society, Coleman thinks that the social change is goaldirected and the social system has the reflexive character. “Theories of social change can,
……contain a conception of directed change, not a conception of change arriving
independent of man’s will, with technology, ……as the engine of change” (p.2). Goaldirected persons, as the basic elements of the social system, could affect the direction of
the social structure changes.
Coleman presents his views by five sections. In the first section, he describes a framework
of the components of the society. Coleman states that the social structure has changed from
hundreds of years ago with the appearance of a new actor in society. Then the society
consists of two actors: the natural person, like you and me, and the corporate actor, a legal
person which could act and be acted upon like natural persons. The emergence of the
modern corporate actors could be traced back to the 13th century. With the emergence of
functional towns, churches as well as corporations with limited liabilities, corporate actors
become a rapidly growing component of modern society and play an increasing role. This
growth in the numbers and legal status of corporate actors and the widespread implications
of this growth result in “asymmetric” present in the relations between natural persons and
corporate actors.
The main component of the society has changed from the natural persons to corporate
actors. This change brings up the asymmetry of relations between the two actors. There are
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three kinds of relationships between them, natural persons to natural persons, natural
persons to corporate actors, and corporate actors to corporate actors. The relationship
between the natural persons and the corporate actors is asymmetric since the latter nearly
always control most of the conditions surrounding the relation and much of the information
relevant to the interaction. This asymmetry results that two parties beginning with
normally equal rights in a relation, but coming to it with vastly different resources, end
with very different actual rights in the relation. This asymmetry of the power gives the
persons two choices, getting opportunities for malfeasance or using the state to redress the
balance.
Spreading widely across all areas of action, corporate actor becomes one actor with an
internal structure composed of positions, while the natural person could merely occupy the
positions through some kinds of contracts. When we look at the corporation, a
representative of the corporate actors, we could find that the related parties inside the
company (a group of people who participate in the corporation) or outside the company
each has its own interests. Owners expect for the returns, employees want to get salaries
and customers need goods on service. The counteracts bind them together and coordinate
the relations between them.
Although the corporate actors dominate the contemporary social life, persons have the
capacity to influence them. In a corporation, as natural persons, owners could choose
managers to control the company or even dissolve the organization, and managers could
control the company purposely or even make malfeasance. To protect their interests
against managerial incompetence and malfeasance, owners ask the auditor to verify the
manager’s performance. Gradually there form equilibrium among the interests of the
organization participants.
Section two examines the legal rights and constitutional history of the acquisition of
excessive rights by corporate actor. First, Coleman explains how we reach the present state
of society by from the Holy Roman Empire through the Middle Ages to the present,
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through a “descending theory” of government to the “ascending theory” of government.
Here, Coleman discusses four structures, for the flow of right to the corporate actor, from
the divine rights of kings, the Middle Ages, modern state socialism to pluralist democracy.
For “state socialism, all sovereignty originates with natural persons individually, and all is
transmitted upward to the central state apparatus. Then, for purposes of governing, parts of
those rights are delegated down to subordinate actors which in effect become agents of the
states” (p.56). Here we can look at the status of the former Soviet Union and China. Since
all sovereignty and property belong to the state, no one could be the real owner of the
corporations, including the CEO or manager. Lack of necessary supervision results in the
operation inefficient and managerial malfeasance.
For “the pluralist democracy, sovereignty originates with natural persons individually. But
here only a portion is transmitted to the state as corporate actor; part continues to be held
individually and part is transmitted to other corporate actors” (p.57). Although corporate
actors require some acquiescence from the state apparatus, a portion of the original
sovereignty never passes into the hands of the state but is lodged directly in the other
corporate actors. Thus, we get that all corporations in liberal democracies gain their rights
and resources through a combination of two routes: owner’s equity and charter from the
state.
Coleman points out that the acquisition of excessive rights by corporate actors results from
the separation of the usage rights (the right to control the use of the property for the pursuit
of a given purpose) and the benefit rights (the right to benefit from the use of the property).
He argues that even where no illegal actions are undertaken, the corporate actors’ resources
tend to be diverted to those exercising usage rights at the expense of all other natural
persons in society.
The last three sections focus on the influence of the emergence of the corporate actor in
various areas of society. Coleman explains some actions taken by corporate actors that
have serious consequences (or risks) for natural persons and how reallocation of rights can
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be used to restrain those actions. He observes the implications of the asymmetric society
on raising children, and further investigates the need for changes in the present system of
new information rights given the new corporate dominated social structure.
Making corporate actors more likely to consider the consequences for persons in their
actions result in some structural changes within corporate actors. Certain actions by
corporate actors impose risk on person and arouse focus of attention on them. For a
pecuniary incentive, large actors, like Hooker Chemical Company could take actions with
little regard for their consequence (risks) for small natural persons. For a bureaucratic
incentive, the risk to the people of Cracow in Poland continuous because the bureaucratic
structure of the state means the subordinate cannot against the order of superior. The
problems exist for them created by an asymmetric society, the natural actors are too small
respect to the large corporate actors.
To vest countervailing power in natural persons within the corporate actors is one way to
deal with asymmetry without creating regulatory agencies that themselves become
powerful corporate actors. As Coleman analyzed, the changes in governance and social
organization within corporate actors to restore imbalance have different effects for persons
with different relations to corporate actors. They work best when natural persons are
employees with a readily available collective action infrastructure. Then the effect
becomes more and more inefficient as the relationship between natural persons and
corporate actors become more and more estranged. However, the corporate actor which
changed the structure of society is its own changing. By restructuring organizations from
within, toward decentralization and by introducing market mechanisms into hierarchy,
corporate actors began to reduce the disparity between interests of them and those of
natural persons. The widespread practice of franchising is a business trend that favors
restoring balance between corporate actors and natural persons.
As we know, one main consequence of asymmetry is that corporate actors nearly control
most of the conditions and information surrounding the relation. The imbalance in
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information results in uneven rights and risks. In a corporation, managers control the
information and could disseminate it selectively. Owners need accurate and complete
information to protect their interests. To redress the imbalance in information, owners ask
auditors to verify the information so that the different interests of participants of the
companies could be satisfied and realized equilibrium.
This book is not a book merely on sociology. It raises some interesting issues and provides
a framework for further studies in today’s social science. What’s the way society is coming
to be organized? How to direct the social change toward a social system that will better
serve us under an asymmetric society? Coleman’s work provokes much reconsideration in
the changing world.
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