The Corporate Paradox: Power and Control in the Business Franchise

First published in 1993, The Corporate Paradox is the first major, in-depth study of the franchise relationship and how it functions. While past debates have focused on the question: What do bosses do?, we are now being asked: Who really is the boss?. Since the late 1970s the emergence of franchising arrangements has been a major part of the wider process of change taking place in the nature of modern business organization. The names of franchise companies are familiar to most people: Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Pepsi cola, Body Shop, to name but a few. But how many people realize that each such outlet is a separate legal entity owned by a local franchisee? Franchising remains, at best, little understood.

In this book, Alan Felstead explores who controls what, why and how, setting his discussion within the context of the many current changes affecting traditional contractual bonds between employers and employees, producers and buyers, owners and managers. This is a must read for students of management, organizational studies, marketing, industrial sociology and commercial law.