After many years, this past summer the Business Roundtable updated its principles of corporate governance with a new Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation. In the accompanying press release, the Business Roundtable emphasized the larger societal role of corporations in America: “If companies fail to recognize that the success of our system is dependent on inclusive long-term growth, many will raise legitimate questions about the role of large employers in our society.” Superseding the decades-long period during which the Business Roundtable supported the view that “corporations exist principally to serve their shareholders,” the revised statement of purpose is oriented toward “the long-term interests” of “all of our stakeholders.”

The Business Roundtable thus joins other prominent voices in corporate America that are now disavowing long-held views of shareholder primacy. The Business Roundtable press release identifies the two sources of this trend. The first is a perceived disconnect between the short-term interests of “shareholders” and the long-term interests of “stakeholders,” a group that, writ large, could encompass all of American society. The second is a desire to stave off government intervention that could impose an overly burdensome stakeholder-centric model of corporate governance through legislation: “If companies fail to recognize that the success of our system is dependent on inclusive long-term growth, many will raise legitimate questions about the role of large employers in our society.”

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