Big business is beginning to accept broader social responsibilities

AT A RECENT dinner in London, a chief executive promised that his airline would soon offer electric flights. A credit provider enthused about increasing financial inclusion in the developing world; a luxury-car executive promised to replace the leather in her vehicles’ opulent interiors with pineapple matting and mushroom-based faux leather. They seemed to think such things made the companies they run sound more attractive. They probably felt that they were doing good.

Businesspeople, being people, like to feel they are doing good. Until the financial crisis, though, for a generation or so most had been happy to think that they did good simply by doing well. They subscribed to the view that treating their shareholders’ need for profit as paramount represented their highest purpose. Economists, business gurus and blue-chip CEOs like those who make up America’s Business Roundtable confirmed them in their view. In a free market, pursuing shareholder value would in and of itself deliver the best goods and services to the public, optimise employment and create the most wealth—wealth which could then be put to all sorts of good uses. It is a view of the world at the same time bracing in its simple rigour and comforting in the lack of social burdens it places on corporate backs.