book
The Modern Corporation and Private Property
Berle, Adolf A., Jr., and Gardiner C. Means. The Modern Corporation and Private Property. New York: Macmillan, 1932.
Why this matters here
Berle and Means document the modern corporation’s separation of formal ownership from operational control—shareholders hold title while managers and layered intermediaries absorb the consequence chain. Coupling takes that classic diagnosis into software and organizational ownership: paper title without operational coupling. The 1932 study names fragmented corporate ownership; the book asks where consequence actually lands when “owners” cannot feel the system’s failure modes.
