A good book is VOC 1602 - 2002: 400 Years of Company Law (Ella Gepken-Jager, Gerard van Solinge, Levinus Timmerman, eds., Deventer: Kluwer Legal Publishers, 2005). It's comprised of articles discussing various aspects of corporate law from the perspective of one of the oldest corporations, the Dutch East India company (VOC). It's out of print and can be hard to find, but you can find it at good academic law libraries. Here's the World Cat page.

A pop history book that can get you started is The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge (2003). It's not great, but it'll give you some context and maybe sharpen your interest on a particular issue or time period. Amazon link.

I can give you other suggestions if you have a particular time period, issue, or geographic region in mind.