Korelsky, V. F. Fish, fishermen and fish industry in Russia / V. F. Korelsky. - Bremen : Krebs, [1993?]-.

A characteristic feature of a concern is a combination of a strict centralized control in the field of capital investment, research and design activities and finances and a wide economic independence of the enterprises, departments and agencies as well as the decentralization of management of the main groups and regions. Corporations occupy a leading position in the economy of the Western countries, the major part of goods produced and services rendered are due to them. The majority of contemporary corporations (of a translational and national scales) are companies with joint capital, and this provides for a possibility of quick mobilization of the financial resources by the sale of shares. Corporations may be state-owned as well as private. In the former case, the controlling block of shares belongs to the state. The significant feature of a corporation is a right guaranteed by the law, for permanent existence irrespective of a change in the composition of capital owners. But, in actual fact, practically half of the corporations that spring up do not exist more than five years because of the market, competitive factors, merging of companies and, as a rule, do not affect the level of production as a whole. Corporations are an effective instrument of the interbranch and intrabranch transfusion of capital. A corporation, as a form of organization of business, presupposes the concentration of management in the hands of professional hired managers. Lately, it became customary for the personnel to buy the shares of their enterprise. The development of corporations followed by the division of the controlling blocks of shares, the scattering of the joint stocks led to the concentration of the real control over the activity of companies in the hands of professional managers. It should be specially pointed out that as distinct from an individual businessman (a capitalist or a private owner), a manager orients his activity not at the collection of profit by any means and the shortest time possible but at the ensuring of stable functioning of the enterprise. The process of development of market relations in the Russian economy reflects, to some extent, the phenomena characteristic of the early stages of development of the Western countries. Let us consider some of them. Cartels and trusts are predecessors of closer forms of monopolistic associations such as holding companies and concerns. Juristically the formation of trust means the transfer of the control of previously independent enterprises (in the form of a controlling block of shares or a special certificate) to a group of eminent enterprisers, the creators of trust, united in the so-called board of trustees. In a trust, the process of centralization of the capital is not complete since the common profit is distributed in accordance with the share participation of separate, previously independent enterprises which hinders the creation of the common investment fund. A cartel (a syndicate) is a form of monopolistic agreement between firms, most frequently of the same branch of industry, with the aim of getting profit by means of regulation of prices, volumes of production and supply (quotas) t o its principal participants. 1 1 2