The public stock company has been a major contributor to value creation since its inception as a new organizational form over one hundred years ago. Michael Porter and others, however, argue that many public companies have defined value creation too narrowly in terms of financial performance. This in tum has contributed to some of the black swan events discussed in Chapter 1, such as large-scale accounting scandals and the global financial crisis. Managers' pursuit of strategies that define value creation too narrowly may have negative consequences for society at large, as evidenced during the global financial crisis. This narrow focus has contributed to the loss of trust in the corporation as a vehicle for value creation, not only for shareholders but also other stakeholders and society.
Nobel laureate Milton Friedman stated his view of the firm's social obligations: "There is one and only one social responsibility of business to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." This notion is often captured by the term shareholder capitalism. According to this perspective, shareholders the providers of the necessary risk capital and the legal owners of public companies have the most legitimate claim on profits. When introducing the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in Chapter 1, though,
we noted that a firm's obligations frequently go beyond the economic responsibility to increase profits, extending to ethical and philanthropic expectations that society has of the business enterprise.