Via [[Lee Bryant]]
corporation from corpus. Medieval roots of corporation were people brought together in a single purpose/economic entity. Guilds, cities. Based on Roman law roots, where a corpus could have legal personhood status. Overtones of collective identity, governance. Pointer suggests a difference with how we see corporations as does the first paragraph here, but the piece itself sees mostly parallels actually. Note that Roman/medieval corpora were about property, (royal) privileges. That is a diff e.g. in US where corporates seek to both be a legal person (wrt politics/finance) and seek distance from accountability a person would have (pollution, externalising negative impacts). I treat a legal entity also as a trade: it bestows certain protections and privileges on me as entrepreneur, but also certain conditions and obligations (public transparancy, financial reporting etc.)
A contrast with ME corpus is seeing [[Corporations as Slow AI 20180201210258]] (anonymous processes, mindlessly wandering to a financial goal)