have led to renewed calls for business to focus on a wider array of stakeholders than just shareholders.
The polar opposite view to stakeholder theory was forcefully articulated by Milton Friedman in a 1970article, “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits”.
So under the modern view of shareholder primacy, corporations should abide by all laws and ethical customs, and can actively trade away shareholder value if the shareholders vote for it. That’s already pretty far away from an image ofMonty Burns cackling “release the hounds” while throwing another couple of bucks on the pile.But as any good manager knows, there are also instrumental reasons for worrying about customers, suppliers, employees, and others.
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