Taming the Octopus : The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation Hardback
by Kyle Edward (University of Virginia) Williams
Hardback
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Description
Recent controversies around ESG investing and “woke” capital evoke an old idea: the Progressive-era vision of a socially responsible corporation.
By the twentieth century, in fact, the notion that business leaders could benefit society had become a consensus view.
But as Kyle Edward Williams’s brilliant history shows, New Deal liberalism realised a kind of big business supervision narrowly focused on the financial interests of shareholders.
This inadvertently laid the groundwork for a set of fringe views to become orthodoxy: that market forces should rule every facet of society.
Along the way American capitalism itself was reshaped, stripping businesses to their profit-making core.
As a rising tide of activists pushed corporations to account for societal harms from napalm to seatbelts to inequitable hiring, a new idea emerged: that managers could maximise value for society while still turning a maximal profit.
This elusive ideal, “stakeholder capitalism”, still dominates our headlines today.
Williams’s necessary history equips us to reconsider democracy’s tangled relationship with capitalism.
Information
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In Stock - More than 10 copies availableFree UK DeliveryEstimated delivery 2-3 working days
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:304 pages, 4 line illustrations
- Publisher:WW Norton & Co
- Publication Date:05/04/2024
- Category:
- ISBN:9780393867237
Information
-
In Stock - More than 10 copies availableFree UK DeliveryEstimated delivery 2-3 working days
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:304 pages, 4 line illustrations
- Publisher:WW Norton & Co
- Publication Date:05/04/2024
- Category:
- ISBN:9780393867237