Friedman 50 years later
Shareholders Don’t Always Want to Maximize Shareholder Value
Oliver Hart, winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize for economics, reflects on how the world has changed since Milton Friedman published his famous essay on the...
Pursuing Stakeholder Capitalism Is an Impossible Task When Stakeholders Have Different Beliefs
Can companies really attempt to benefit all stakeholders, when stakeholders rarely agree on the best course of action? A new study examines Walmart’s 2019...
What Stakeholder Capitalism Can Learn From Milton Friedman
Instead of ridiculing the Friedman doctrine and proclaiming its death, advocates of stakeholder capitalism and responsible investing, like me, can learn a lot from...
The Illusory Promise of “Stakeholderism”: Why Embracing Stakeholder Governance Would Fail Stakeholders
Stakeholderism—granting corporate leaders discretion to give weight to the interest of all stakeholders—should not be expected to deliver its purported benefits to stakeholders. Furthermore,...
Serving Shareholders Doesn’t Mean Putting Profit Above All Else
The time has come for companies, economists, and society to abandon the argument that the only responsibility of business is to maximize profits.
Editor’s note:...
Diversifying Corporate Boards — the Best Way Toward a Balanced Shareholder/Stakeholder System of Corporate Governance
Boards can recognize that their shareholders have needs beyond financial wealth maximization. Making corporate boards representative and diverse works better than co-determination or implied...
Friedman’s Principle, 50 Years Later
In the mid-1980s, Milton Friedman’s view that the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits became dominant in business and academia....
