The different types of Corporation structures which I have come across can be broken down into the following groups:
Social, Capitalistic, Communistic, Federal, Anarchistic. Democratic
All other sub groups are generally made from one or more of these base archetypes. For instance a large public corporation in EVE which has share holders will be Capitalistic and Democratic possibly due to the fact that usually these types of companies have a board of directors which all vote on company direction etc.
Generally the types of corporations that exist in EVE have biases based around Combat, Social, and Industrial bases.
I will now explain what I believe to be the advantages and drawbacks of these different corporate structures.
Social
Generally these types of corporations exist for mostly social purposes. They may contain groups of friends who wish to play together in game or perhaps a group of strangers how are interested in mission running or pirating. They generally don’t have any particular goals in mind and they are usually not very rich since all the players socialise with each other but tend to work for themselves.
Capitalistic
These are corporations which are geared around the acquisition of ISK. They don’t necessarily have to be industrial corporations but generally this is the case. The come in a couple of different flavours.
- Privately Owned
These corporations are owned by a single individual with a goal in mind. They can have many members who will work for the corporation. Corporations of this type can be medium to quite rich. Generally corporations of this type are very focused and because they are privately owned get there direction from a single person. Due to this kind of structure they tend to maximise their wealth. In terms of how these corporations can work. They can be large or very small. Jobs that require doing can be subcontracted out to other 3rd parties or other corp members.
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Publicly Owned
Communistic
These corporations generally will have a common goal. All corp members will be expected to work towards that common goal. Since this is a communist approach they will probably adopt a communistic pay system. I.e The corporation pays for everything, these types of corporations can have much wealth. Since they have a lot of resource at there disposal. I would expect these corporations to be owned jointly by all members but this might not be the case. Since all members effectively own the corporation then decisions of strategy could be hard to make quickly.
Federal/Federation
A Federation can be defined as a organised set of individuals who work for themselves but with a loosely governing structure. Generally these types of corporate structures can have many members.
However due to the fact that every member works for themselves, corporate finance can be an issue. The main corporation in this case may not be very rich at all with all of the members holding all the wealth. Also problematic in this system is the fact of corporate identity, although the corporation will have a CEO as this is mandatory. All the decision making power is distributed amongst the members and therefore decisions and funding for projects could be problematic.
One possible source of income would be the use of corporation tax’s in this type of structure. This works very well where the corporation has many active members. On the positive side however the corporation may consist of a rich diverse set of people adding to the success of the corporation.
Anarchistic
These corporation types don't generally have a goal. They might have a very lose one like lets PVP or lets pirate but generally they don't have any direction and members would be pretty much self sufficient. An NPC corporation could described as Anarchistic. These types of corporation would not possess much in the way of riches as they are unfocused and might be very social based also.
Democratic
In this type of corporate structure all decisions are made in a democratic fashion. This corporation type generally would have a goals and be focused. In terms of wealth these types of corporations can be very wealthy as they can be publically owned, or just owned by the members. In this corporation the CEO or directors would come up with a direction and its members would then vote on this to decide what the company should do next.
Payments to members might be made through contracts system perhaps or salary based.
Paying your corp members…
So how do you pay your corp members? Well there are several ways to pay your corp members.
First one is a salary, this is a fairly obvious one.
Second way Contracts system.
Third way is through share dividends
Fourth way is through just paying for everything that your corp members need.
Salary
Each one of these ways works, a salary might not however be in ISK it might be ship parts to sell or something along those lines. Other ways like perhaps a mining operation once a week where your corp members keep what they mine. The rest of the time everything goes to the corp.
Contract System
This system allows the creation of contracts that can be taken by your corp members. Each contract that is created can have an amount that is paid out to the member on completion.
The contract system allows for quite a diverse set of contracts to be created. The advantage of using this type of system is that. You only pay members of your corporation for jobs that that do for your corporation. This means that people who don’t contribute don’t get paid. Generally using this type of system I would expect that the corporation members would supply and maintain there own equipment.
Dividends
This is where you issue shares of your company to your corporation members. Then pay dividends on those shares. Although this might seem like a good idea at first and in many cases this is a good idea there are still problems associated with this. For instance if your corporation is worth billions and you recruit a new member how many shares do you give them? Or do you expect them to buy shares? Well if you do then how are they supposed to buy shares? This is where you need to be carefull about how many shares are issued etc. Also can members buy more shares and reinvest…
It gets complicated but can work well. However once shares are issued the company does not solely belong to the CEO or director anymore per say.
The first two types of payments types for corp members have issues in that by paying your corporation members you are effectively restricting your corporation’s ability to perform business and that capital is leaking away from the corporation funds.
Communistic pay system
This is in my opinion the best system to use for a corporation with a relatively small member base. Which has small to medium profit base? In this system the member will be given everything they want in return for their services. All equipment however remains the property of the corporation.
It is important however to express to corp members that if they should leave they will be given a golden goodbye based on their contributions. In this type of system all profits are focused on a particular task this can be more efficient than other pay systems.
So how do you choose what type of model to use?
Well, this really depends on you, what your want to do and the people your with and how they feel. Currently I run a small 2 man corp. I chose the privately owned, communistic approach. Where the corporation pays for everything and in return all profits go back to the corporation.
There are no salaries because no one needs anything that the corporation does not provide.
This allows all profits to be maximised for again profit generation. We are focused because I provide direction. Anyway your choice :D. I hope this has gone some way to explaining the pro’s and cons of different corporation structures.
