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Term Paper
Term Paper
Term paper
Student: Marcelo Monteverde
Number of words: 4.719
Date: 08/05/2016
1
Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to critically discuss the following statement:
“Shareholder Value Theory presents an atomistic vision of society, and the necessity of social
contracts for living together, as buyers and sellers. Society is then no more than the sum of
the individual and the good of the society is only the agreement of individual interests. Within
the society, business is a private and autonomous activity only restricted by the regulations of
the government, with no other responsibility than to make a profit and create wealth”.
The paper consists of six main sections:
Shareholder Value Theory:
in this section I present the Shareholder Value Theory.
Discussion of Shareholder Value Theory: in this section I discuss Shareholder Value
Theory using the concepts of the previous sections.
Long term approach: in this section I briefly describe the strategy that our global
civilization should take in order to address the sustainability challenge.
Conclusion:
in this section I summarize the paper and present my conclusions.
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Shareholder Value Theory
Shareholder value theory, promoted by the Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, holds
that only social responsibility of business is making profits and increasing value of the
company for its shareholders. Other social activities that companies could engage in would
only be acceptable if they are prescribed by law or if they contribute to the maximization of
shareholder value (Melé, 2008:55). Basically, Shareholder Value Theory is a theory against
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
In 1970, Friedman wrote an article in The New York Times named “A Friedman
doctrine The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”. In this famous
article he stated that
“there is one and only one responsibility of business to use its
resources and engage in activities 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”
(Friedman, 1970:4). While this is central idea of the Shareholder Value Theory, he also
expressed in the article some other ideas that are worth mentioning to understand the
implications of his theory.
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“Only people can have responsibilities. A corporation is an artificial person and in this sense
may have responsibilities, but business as a whole cannot be said to have responsibilities”
(Friedman, 1970:1).
To the question about the meaning of the social responsibility of a corporate
executive, Friedman replied that if a corporate executive has a social responsibility it must
mean that he is to act in some way that is not in the interest of his employers. For example, by
refraining from increasing prices to prevent inflation or by making expenditures on reducing
pollution beyond the amount that is in the best interest of the corporation. In each of this
cases, the corporate executive would be spending someone else’s money and by doing this he
is imposing taxes and, at the same time, deciding how the tax proceeds should be spent. He
becomes a public employee doing what a civil servant would do in a socialist country.
Therefore, Friedman said that
“social responsibility involves the acceptance of the socialist
view that the political mechanisms, not market mechanisms, are the appropriate way to
determine the allocation of scarce resources to alternative uses”
(Friedman, 1970:2).
In the article, Friedman made other assertions criticizing social responsibility by
relating it to socialism. For example, he said that businessmen who declaim that business is
concerned with profit but also with promoting desirable social ends are
“preaching pure and
unadulterated socialism” and that
“the use of the cloak of social responsibility does clearly
harm the foundations of a free society”
. In his book “Capitalism and Freedom”, Friedman
called social responsibility a
“fundamentally subversive doctrine” in a free society
(Friedman, 1970:4).
As we can see, Shareholder Value Theory contains several philosophical assumptions.
Those have its origins in the seventeenth century, particularly from John Locke (Melé,
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2008:58). Milton Friedman has also been very much influenced by Adam Smith’s economic
theory.
In the next section I will briefly review those theories and its origins. I consider that
this will be useful to have a thorough understanding of the ideas, concepts, thoughts and
values that underlie the theories that Milton Friedman and many other economist have
developed and promoted, mainly in AngloSaxon countries. My review of the history of
science and economics is based on the first three chapters of “The systems view of life: A
unifying vision” by Fritjof Capra.
History of Science
Before 1500, the dominant worldview in European civilization, as well as in most
other civilizations, was organic. People lived in small communities and experienced nature in
terms of personal relationships, characterized by the interdependence of spiritual and material
concerns and the subordination of individual needs to those of the community. The scientific
thought of that time was based on reason and faith and its main goal was to answer
meaningful questions related to God, the human soul and ethics. It looked for wisdom to
understand the natural order and live in harmony with it.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the medieval outlook changed
radically. The notion of an organic, living, and spiritual universe was replaced by that of the
world as a machine, and the mechanistic conception of reality became the basis of the modern
worldview. This change was a consequence of the revolutionary advances in physics and
astronomy brought by Copérnico, Galileo and Newton and on the mathematical description
of nature and the analytic method of reasoning conceived by René Descartes.
The new mentality and new perception of the cosmos gave our Western civilization
the features that are characteristic of the modern era. They became the basis of the paradigm
that has dominated our culture for the past 300 years.
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The scientific revolution
The scientific revolution began with Nicolás Copérnico (1473–1543), who brought
down the dogma that the Earth was the center of the Universe, which had been accepted for
more than a thousand years.
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was the first to combine scientific experimentation with
the use of mathematical language, and is therefore generally considered the father of modern
science.
René Descartes (1596–1650) was not only the first modern philosopher but also a
brilliant mathematician and scientist. He did not accept any traditional knowledge but set out
to build a whole new system of thought by developing a new method for reasoning that was
presented in his famous book “Discourse on method”. The method developed by Descartes
consists in breaking up thoughts and problems into pieces and in arranging these in their
logical order. This analytic method of reasoning has become an essential characteristic of
modern scientific thought and has proven extremely useful in the development of scientific
theories and the realization of complex technological projects. On the other hand,
overemphasis on the Cartesian method has led to the fragmentation that is characteristic of
both our general thinking and our academic disciplines, and to the widespread attitude of
reductionism in science – the belief that all aspects of complex phenomena can be understood
by reducing them to their smallest constituent parts.
Descartes postulated the division between mind and matter and concluded that the two
were separate and fundamentally different. Cartesian division between mind and matter has
had a profound effect on Western thought. It has taught us to be aware of ourselves as
isolated egos existing “inside” our bodies.
To Descartes the material universe was a machine and nothing but a machine. There
was no purpose, life, or spirituality in matter. Nature worked according to mechanical laws,
and everything in the material world could be explained in terms of the arrangement and
movement of its parts. This mechanical picture of nature became the dominant paradigm of
science in the period following Descartes.
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The drastic change in the image of nature from organism to machine had a strong
effect on people’s attitudes toward the natural environment. The Cartesian view of the
universe as a mechanical system provided a
scientific authorization for the manipulation and
exploitation of nature that became typical of modern civilization.
Descartes created the conceptual framework for seventeenthcentury science, but his
view of nature as a perfect machine, governed by exact mathematical laws, had to remain a
vision during his lifetime. He could not do more than sketch the outlines of his theory of
natural phenomena. The man who realized the Cartesian dream and completed the Scientific
Revolution was Isaac Newton (1643–1727).
Newtonian mechanics was extended far beyond the description of macroscopic
bodies. The behaviors of solids, liquids, and gases, including the phenomena of heat and
sound, were explained successfully in terms of the motion of elementary material particles.
For the scientists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this tremendous success of the
mechanistic model confirmed their belief that the universe was indeed a huge mechanical
system, running according to the Newtonian laws of motion, and that Newton’s mechanics
was the ultimate theory of natural phenomena.
Social sciences
With the establishment of mechanistic worldview in the eighteenth century, physics
became the foundation for every science. The thinkers of that century applied Newtonian
mechanics principles to the study of human nature and human society. In doing so, they
created the social sciences.
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Following the Newtonian theory of the universe and the rational approach to human
problems, the philosopher John Locke developed an atomistic view of society, describing it
in terms of its basic building blocks, the individual human beings. Locke attempted to reduce
the phenomena observed in society to the behavior of its individuals. Thus he proceeded to
study first the nature of the individual human being, and then tried to apply the principles of
human nature to economic and political problems.
Locke believed that the actions of all men were always motivated by what they
assumed to be in their own interest. When Locke applied his theory of human nature to social
phenomena, he was guided by the belief that there were laws of nature governing human
society similar to those governing the physical universe. As the atoms in a gas would
establish a balanced state, so human individuals would settle down in society in a “state of
nature.” Thus the function of government was not to impose its own laws on the people, but
rather to discover and enforce the natural laws that existed before any government was
formed. According to Locke, these natural laws included the freedom and equality of all
individuals as well as the right to property, which represented the fruits of one’s labor.
Locke’s ideas became the basis for the value system of the Enlightenment and had a
strong influence on the development of modern economic and political thought. The ideals of
individualism, property rights, free markets, and representative government, all of which can
be traced back to Locke, contributed significantly to the thinking of Thomas Jefferson and are
reflected in the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution.
Economics
8
customs and activities resulted in the creation of new social and political institutions and gave
rise to a new academic pursuit: the theorizing about a set of specific economic activities.a.
Along with John Locke, Sir William Petty was one of the founders of modern
economics in the seventeenth century. His arithmetic was based on Galileo, Descartes and
Newton. It consisted in replacing words and arguments for numbers and measures, and of
using rational arguments to explain economic phenomena. According to Petty, the price of
goods should reflect the work invested on them. However, Locke came up with the idea that
prices were also determined objectively, by demand and supply. This not only liberated the
merchants of the day from the moral law of “just” prices; it also became another cornerstone
of economics and was elevated to equal status with the laws of mechanics, where it stands
even today in many economic analyses.
The period of “classical political economy” was inaugurated in 1776, when the
Scottish philosopher Adam Smith published “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations”. Adam Smith is considered the most important economist in all history.
Smith took from the French Physiocrats the “laissez faire” doctrine, according to which the
natural law, if not impeded, would govern economic affairs for the greatest benefit of all, and
immortalized it in the metaphor of the “invisible hand”. According to Smith, the invisible
hand of the market would guide the individual selfinterest of all entrepreneurs, producers,
and consumers for the harmonious betterment of all, “betterment” being equated with the
production of material wealth. In this way a social result would be achieved that was
independent of individual intentions.
He also accepted the idea that prices would be determined in “free” markets by the
balancing effects of supply and demand and he based his economic theory on the Newtonian
notions of equilibrium. This idealistic picture underlies the “competitive model” widely used
by economists today. Its basic assumptions include perfect and free information for all
participants in a market transaction; the belief that each buyer and seller in a market is small
and has no influence on price, and the complete and instant mobility of displaced workers,
natural resources, and machinery. All these conditions are violated in the vast majority of
today’s markets, yet most economists continue to use them as the basis of their theories.
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Smith predicted that economic progress would eventually come to an end when the
wealth of nations had been pushed to the natural limits of soil and climate, but he thought this
point was so far in the future that it was irrelevant to his theories. Today our global economy
is fast approaching these natural limits.
Discussion of Shareholder Value Theory
Now that the ideas and theories of John Locke and Adam Smith have been presented,
its relation to the Shareholder Value Theory becomes evident. In several parts of his New
York Times Magazine article Friedman made references to values such as free society, free
market, free enterprise, private property, voluntary cooperation. As we have already seen,
those concepts are rooted on the theories developed by John Locke and Adam Smith.
Friedman idea that only responsibility of business is making profits and that society is a
collection of individuals, are very much related to the belief of John Locke that the actions of
all men are always motivated by their own interest and his atomistic view of society,
describing it in terms of individual human beings as it basic building blocks. In addition,
Friedman’s ferocious critics to social responsibility by relating it to socialism are an obvious
defense to selfinterest and Adam Smith’s invisible hand. The statement that by engaging in
“social responsibility” activities the manager of a corporation would be spending the money
of his employer, represent a clear defense of private property rights.
Since it is based on Locke’s and Smith’s theories, the Shareholder Value Theory is
rooted in the Cartesian paradigm. Its approach is fragmentary, reductionist and mechanistic.
It also shows the materialistic and manipulative thinking of the industrial age. It does not
recognize that the economy is just one aspect of the whole ecological and social fabric. It
ignores this social and ecological interdependence, reduces all value to private profit making
and pursuits unlimited economic growth.
Shareholder Value Theory clearly shows that in modern industrial culture, we have
overemphasized the selfassertive thinking and values and we have neglected the integrative
tendencies. We became completely selfassertive and therefore the prominent values are
quantity, expansion, competition and domination (Capra, 2014:13). A sample of this is that
10
by 2014 the 1% richest people of the world owned 48% of the global wealth and it was
expected to exceed 50%1 by 2016.
The analysis of the history of science, particularly social sciences and economics,
enables us to understand that this is a consequence of our present way of thinking and values,
which are the result of a process that developed from the sixteenth century to the present and
that will take a very long time to change.
Other theories, standards and certifications
Fortunately, the change has already begun. New theories, standards and certifications
that show a tendency towards more integrative ways of thinking and values have been
developed. The Stakeholder Theory of CSR developed by Edward Freeman, the publication
of ISO 26.000 standard and the rise of B corporations are good examples of this tendency.
Stakeholder Theory
The Stakeholder Theory basically shares the same convictions as the Shareholder
theory regarding democracy and market economy principles. However, on other points they
are very different. According to Stakeholder Theory, the purpose of the company is related to
the interests of different individuals or groups who affect or are affected by the activities of
the firm: owners, customers, employees, suppliers, local communities, etc. From this
perspective, CSR means that corporations have an obligation to groups in society others than
shareholders and beyond that prescribed by law. Freeman based the stakeholder theory on
two ethical principles: “Principle of Corporate Rights”, which establishes that the corporation
and its managers may not violate the legitimate rights of others to determine their future; and
“Principle of Corporate Effects”, which establishes that the corporation and its managers are
responsible for the effects of their action on others. Two more principles complete the theory:
the corporation ought to be managed for the benefit of its stakeholders and management must
1
"Richest 1% will own more than all the rest by 2016 | Oxfam International." 2015. 7 May. 2016
<https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/20150119/richest1willownmoreallrest2016
>
11
act in the interest of the stakeholders as their agent. The theory also has seven principles to
make it practical (Melé, 2008:6264).
ISO 26.000
2
"Patagonia Footprint Chronicles: Our Supply Chain." 2010. 7 May. 2016
<http://www.patagonia.com/us/footprint>
12
behavior, respect for stakeholder interest, respect for the rule of law, respect for international
norms of behavior, respect for human rights (ISO/DIS 26000, 2010:1014).
B Corporations
B Corporations are forprofit companies certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet
rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and
transparency. Today, there is a growing community of more than 1.400 Certified B Corps
from 42 countries3. In order to become a B corp, a company must complete the B Impact
Assessment and earn a reviewed minimum score of 80 out of 200 points and meet the legal
requirements for B corp, this means to amend the governing documents in order to give legal
protection to directors and officers to consider the interests of all stakeholders, not just
shareholders, when making decisions4.
3
"What are B Corps? | B Corporation." 2013. 29 Jan. 2016 <
https://www.bcorporation.net/whatarebcorps
>
4
"How to Become a B Corp | B Corporation." 2013. 29 Jan. 2016
<https://www.bcorporation.net/becomeabcorp/howtobecomeabcorp >
13
The fact that B corporations exist and that they are more of them each day is a
demonstration that it is possible to include social responsibility and sustainable development
in the core of the company and still be profitable.
Long term approach
The goal of most national economies is to achieve unlimited growth of their GDP (an
index that ignores all non monetary aspects of the economy). Such undifferentiated and
unlimited growth is seen as essential by almost all economists and politicians, even though it
should by now be clear that unlimited expansion on a finite planet can only lead to disaster.
The illusion of unlimited growth on a finite planet is the fundamental dilemma at the roots of
all the major problems of our time.
Then, our challenge is to shift from an economic system based on the notion of
unlimited growth to one that is both ecologically sustainable and socially just. Unlimited
quantitative growth on a finite planet is clearly unsustainable, but qualitative economic
growth can be sustained if it involves a dynamic balance between growth, decline, and
recycling.
Our goal is sustainable development. But the meaning of development here is not, or
must not be, the meaning that most economists use, restricted to a single economic dimension
measured in terms of per capita GDP. If “development” is used in that narrow economic
sense, associated with the notion of unlimited quantitative growth, such economic
development can never be sustainable. If, however, the process of development is understood
as more than a purely economic process, including social, ecological, cultural, and spiritual
dimensions, and if it is associated with qualitative economic growth, then such a
multidimensional systemic process can indeed be sustainable (Capra, 2014: 368:375).
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Conclusions
In the present paper I have analyzed the Shareholder Value Theory in relation to the
statement which is the topic of the paper. To do so, I have firstly presented the Shareholder
Value Theory, its most important concepts and ideas, and I have also showed the thinking of
the author, Milton Friedman. Secondly, I have briefly summarized the history of science from
the fifthteenth century to the twentieth century, with main focus on social sciences and
economics. My intention was to present a conceptual and historical framework to analyze
Shareholder Value Theory.
By doing this analysis I have been able to establish a close relation between
Shareholder Value Theory and the ideas and theories of John Locke and Adam Smith. This
relation becomes evident in Milton Friedman’s expressions about free society, free enterprise,
private property and voluntary cooperation. Even more, his postulates that the responsibility
of a business is just making money, that society is a not more than a collection of individuals
and his critics to social responsibility by relating it to socialism, are clearly related to the
atomistic vision of society proposed by Locke and the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith. In
addition, this analysis enabled me to see that Shareholder Value Theory is rooted in the
Cartesian paradigm and therefore that its approach is fragmentary, reductionist and
mechanistic. Its materialistic and manipulative thinking also became apparent. Thus, I
conclude that the statement presented as the topic of this paper describes Shareholder Value
Theory appropriately.
The paper continues with the presentation of Stakeholder Theory, ISO 26.000 and B
Corporations, as a way to introduce present trends of CSR and to show the change that is
already happening in the global society regarding our way of thinking and values.
15
Literature
Melé, Domènec. "Corporate social responsibility theories."
The Oxford handbook of
corporate social responsibility
(2008): 4882.
Friedman, M. “A Friedman doctrine; The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase
Its Profits”. New York Times Magazine. September 1970.
Draft International Standard ISO/DIS 26000. Guidance on social responsibility 2010.
International Organization for Standardization.
Henriques, A. (2012) Standards for change? ISO 26000 and sustainable development.
International Institute for Environment and Development. London.
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