Taming the octopus The long battle for the soul of the corporation

Kyle Edward Williams

Book - 2024

"In this vivid and surprising history, we meet activists, investors, executives, and workers who fought over a simple question: Is the role of the corporation to deliver profits to shareholders, or something more? On one side were 'business statesmen' who believed corporate largess could solve social problems. On the other were libertarian intellectuals such as Milton Friedman and his oft-forgotten contemporary, Henry Manne, whose theories justified the ruthless tactics of a growing class of corporate raiders. But Williams reveals that before the 'activist investor' emerged as a capitalist archetype, Civil Rights groups used a similar playbook for different ends, buying shares to change a company from within. As a r...ising tide of activists pushed corporations to account for societal harms from napalm to environmental pollution to inequitable hiring, a new idea emerged: that managers could maximize 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."--

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2nd Floor New Shelf 658.408/Williams (NEW SHELF) Due Jan 12, 2025
Subjects
Published
New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company [2024]
Language
English
Main Author
Kyle Edward Williams (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
290 pages : illustration ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-278) and index.
ISBN
9780393867237
  • Introduction: What is the corporation good for?
  • The new princes of industry
  • The single and most serious danger
  • Building the city of god
  • Fighting for jobs
  • "A bundle of assets"
  • The rise of the corporate guerrilla fighter
  • Making social responsibility corporate
  • "There is no such thing as a corporate responsibility"
  • Nothing to ask permission for.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Williams, senior editor of the Hedgehog Review, debuts with a sharp study of the struggle to hold corporations accountable in the 20th century. Focusing on the politicians, economists, and activists involved, Williams tells how aggressive advocacy from lawyer Adolf Berle, a member of FDR's "Brain Trust," helped secure the 1934 establishment of the Securities Exchange Act, which "brought more specialized professional standards" to the New York stock exchange. New Deal regulation, Williams notes, came under intense scrutiny in the latter half of the 20th century from such conservative economists as Henry Manne, who argued that corporations should pursue profit without regard for "mutual fairness and individual morality." Williams's thought-provoking analysis pushes back against the notion that corporations are not public institutions, highlighting how grassroots accountability campaigns--including the 1950s push for Kodak to start a job-training program for Black workers, who were severely underrepresented at the company--"harkened back to an older view" of corporations as "concessions of state power created for the good of society." The fascinating history also presents glimpses into legislative roads not taken, such as an abandoned 1907 proposal championed by Theodore Roosevelt that would have granted the federal government a direct role in the administration of private companies. The result is a riveting look at corporations' ever-shifting role in American society. (Feb.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

How reformers have taken on--and might yet transform--big business in the U.S. In this astute history, Hedgehog Review senior editor Williams charts the evolution of the corporation into its outsized and seemingly predatory role in American life, along with prominent efforts undertaken to reform it. Drawing on "the stories of businesspeople, employees, consumers, and activists who have waged battles over business decisions, managerial strategies, and public policy," the author traces key stages of the corporation's rising autonomy and activists' resistance to its undemocratic powers. The severing of "noneconomic considerations from the ability to act on them," Williams argues convincingly, "is nothing less than a moral fracture at the heart of the corporation--a fatal and rarely understood flaw that makes its history over the past century a regrettable tragedy." The author provides a detailed and accessible account of reform movements that have checked corporate power, and he reminds us that neoliberal deregulation is a recent phenomenon that might, in spite of daunting obstacles, be reversed or revised. Williams shows how a view of the corporation as necessarily being responsible to more than shareholders' profits is not only familiar from history, but should be reinvigorated. Though some of the economic and legal minutiae of the topic can be dry, the author's consistently lively presentation of the drama involved in battles over profits and social welfare creates an engaging narrative. Williams memorably renders the personalities of key figures in debates about the corporation's role, such as Ralph Nader, and we gain a vivid sense of the passions informing competing ideologies. The author makes it clear that a moral reckoning for corporations is possible, and a thoroughgoing reformation of the institution would promise enormous benefits for the common good. A fascinating account of efforts to rein in the excesses of capitalism. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.