Global Solutions Forum

Don Mayer is Professor of the Practice, Business Ethics and Legal Studies at the Daniels College of Business.  He has published in the top law reviews and business ethics journals, and is co-editor, along with James O’Toole, of Good Business: Exercising Effective and Ethical Leadership.
 
In this discussion group, attendees will take up the recent proclamations by the Business Roundtable that maximizing shareholder value will no longer be the guiding principle for corporate responsibility, but rather maximizing positive social impact. Recent polls by Fortune magazine found that 72% agreed that public companies should be “mission driven” as well as focused on shareholder and customers.  Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, has written recently that corporate responsibility must be taken to “the next level.”
 
The session will begin with Mayer’s presentation of the “Four Levels of Corporate Responsibility,” and discussion will follow. The primary question is whether major corporations can actually be expected to help lead the kind of change toward “inclusive capitalism,” “sustainable capitalism,” or “shared value capitalism” in order to move beyond the now-extant forms of capitalism in the United States: “corporate capitalism,” “financial capitalism,” and crony capitalism.