Corporation
And the reality around them
"Big Business"
Stock Holders
The Technical owner of a corporations and amount of ownership is determined by the amount of shares a person has inquired. Therefor thousands of people can own a business. Each share holder has basic rights in which all companies must follow: Shareholders can transfer ownership to others, vote for member of board, make profit based on how well the business does, and buy new shares in the company. The amount of ownership one has with in a company depends on number of stocks they hold
Board of Directors
Ruling body of the organization. In order to keep the business running smoothly the owners of the company (stockholders) elect members to the board. If things are running well with company the Board is their to deal with secondary issues like new policies or rules. If the business begins to fail the Board will often step in to either hire or fire officers. In larger corporations a board can consist of 10-25 members and do not have to be directly involved with company some members can be college professors or executives from a partner company.
Officer
Officers in an organization are top executives who are chosen by the board to lead the company. These officers often have titles like CEO, CFO, COO and countless of other titles. These men and women are often people you see as the head of organization such as Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zukerburg, But in reality often times they can be fired from their own company and be replaced.
Closed vs Open Corporations
In a closed corporation, ownership is not purchasable by the general public and is held to fewer members such as highly ranked employees or bigger businessmen and women. In most states a private corporation does not have to release sales figures or other info to the public because stockholders are not the general public. An example of a closed corporation would be Dell computers. In contrast an open corporation can be bought by most people on the stock market and shares are sold to a large amount of people for what the estimated worth of the company is at one particular moment. This ownership can be sold and bought often and sold just as fast. An example of an open corporation would have to be google.