Just in terms of impact it can be argued that major corporations wield more power than governments. The social impact is unequaled, and policies like Neoliberalism and Austerity only increase that impact. For example; one of the major issues in any election campaign is always unemployment. Candidates for political office always promise to create jobs, and every incumbent politician claims every quarter to have created X number of new jobs, and so on.
Well, of course, governments do not create jobs (unless you are talking about the public sector, and with Neoliberalism and Austerity, the public sector is being slashed to pieces everywhere you look.
No. Companies create jobs. Companies create employment and they create unemployment. Companies decide what workers’ wages will be, and that translates to determining their standard of living. They decide the price of goods and services, which translates to determining the cost of living. They decide where they will invest, where they will operate, where they will set up a factory or an office or any other facility; and that choice has a tangible, quantifiable impact on the development of that area, and upon the lives of the people who live there.
When you are talking about major multinational corporations, huge conglomerate companies with dozens of subsidiaries; these become in practical terms, their own economies. And they are Command Economies. Decisions made in the corporate boardrooms can determine whether or not the people within their sphere of influence have livelihoods, how much money they can make, how much money they have to spend, what goods and services will be available to them, whether or not the infrastructure in their area will be developed or derelict, whether or not they can afford to send their children to school, or what type of school they can afford to send their children to, and so on. Their decisions can have inter-generational impact. And I am not even discussing the environmental impact these decisions can have, and what that can mean for the population.