Shareholder vs. Stakeholder capitalism
Pentagon Report Points to Two Major Risks to National Security: Consolidation and Shareholder Capitalism
A Pentagon report released earlier this month warns that concentrated supply chains, offshoring, and a "business climate that has favored short-term shareholder earnings” have...
eBook: Milton Friedman 50 Years Later, a Reevaluation
Over the past couple of months, ProMarket has hosted a lively debate on whether Milton Friedman was right or wrong when he wrote that...
Corporate Responsibility and The Two Minds of Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman had two inconsistent minds: That of an economist and an ideologue. The view that maximizing profits without constraint is a manager’s only...
To Make a Difference, Businesses Must Have a Stake in Social Missions
Despite their promises to change the world for the better and remedy social ills, the truth is that corporations are rarely designed to solve...
Friedman’s Legacy: From Doctrine to Theorem
Friedman was more right than his detractors claim and more wrong than his supporters would like us to believe. However, after 50 years of...
The Purpose of Business is to Solve Problems of Society, Not to Cause Them
Claims that a stakeholder-focused system of corporate governance cannot succeed in the US are perverse because they take as given that corporations in the...
Can Institutional Investors Solve Societal Issues When Governments Fail to Do So?
A new study looks into the social costs associated with private prisons to show that privatization may come with social trade-offs when governments fail...
Bringing Ethics Back to Friedman’s Call to Purpose for the Next 50 Years
Fifty years ago, Friedman compellingly presented his argument for shareholder primacy. But as currently implemented, shareholder primacy threatens the unifying purposes that drove people...
Milton Friedman and the Need for Justice
Milton Friedman predicated his shareholder value maximization credo on the strong implicit and explicit assumptions that the rules of society protect stakeholders other than...
Shareholder Value and Social Responsibility Are Not At Odds
Being socially responsible can, and frequently does, make good business sense. There are plenty of opportunities for companies to do well by doing good.
Editor’s...
