@Humpleupagus @CatLord I’m using it/interpreting it in the Coasian “Theory of the Firm” sense, which incorporates the idea I think you’re pointing at, which is that “firms exist when they confer a supra-linear benefit for exclusively internal cooperation”
the problem is that that only works when, as noted, everybody in the structure (including those running it) is cooperating, which hasn’t been true for a real long time; for a supermajority of organizations, and for a very long time now, the game has been “who can screw the other guy first/hardest”