This Essay addresses an issue that, to be candid, perplexes me. That issue is the continuing dismay evidenced in Western, capitalist nations when public corporations that pursue profit for their stockholders take actions that adversely affect the nation’s economic stability, the corporation’s employees, or the environment.
When a corporation’s ardor for profits leads it to take excessive risks that endanger the firm’s solvency, commentators react with shock and dismay. How can corporate managers be so blinded by the immediate prospect of profit that they would ignore what, in hindsight, seem like such obvious risks? Likewise, we rent our garments in anger and chagrin when energy companies take environmental shortcuts in drilling for oil or mining coal, surprised that profit-maximizing firms have been less than optimally protective of the environment and their workers, that they did not go beyond what was simply necessary to ensure that regulators allowed them to operate. Similarly, we anguish when the board of a venerable homeland corporate icon reacts receptively to a premium takeover bid from a foreign acquirer. How could the board sell out and undermine the traditional values the firm stands for? It cannot be that the long-term stockholders would put their desire for a onetime, short-term profit ahead of the continued independence of a nationally important institution?
Although I am sympathetic to many of the sentiments and policy concerns that motivate these dismayed reactions, I confess to being weary of the naïveté they manifest. More importantly, the continued failure of our societies to be clear-eyed about the role of the for-profit corporation endangers the public interest. Instead of recognizing that for-profit corporations will seek profit for their stockholders using all legal means available, we imbue these corporations with a personality and assume they are moral beings capable of being “better” in the long-run than the lowest common denominator. We act as if entities in which only capital has a vote will somehow be able to deny the stockholders their desires, when a choice has to be made between profit for those who control the board’s reelection prospects and positive outcomes for the employees and communities who do not.
In this Essay, I identify some recent instances that reflect our continued inability to view the for-profit corporation with a gimlet eye. These examples track recurrent patterns. I begin with a couple stories in the headlines of corporate greed at BP in connection with the Deepwater disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and at the U.S. banks that were bailed out by the federal government. I then proceed to less obvious stories where courts have affirmed the preeminence of stockholders in the for-profit corporation, the first in an older case challenging Henry Ford’s stated preference for employees over stockholders and the second in a recent one challenging Craigslist’s attempt to protect its online community from stockholders selling in a takeover. Next, I consider how stockholders have fared in other capitalist countries, looking at Kraft’s successful takeover of Cadbury in the United Kingdom and BHP Billiton’s failed bid to acquire the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan. In the end, policy makers should not delude themselves about the corporation’s ability to police itself; government still has a critical role in setting the rules of the game.
