Corporate Governance

Stakeholders, corporate purpose, and governance welfarism.

Corporate governance asks whose welfare a company should be run for — shareholders alone, or a broader set of stakeholders including employees, customers, and communities — and the answer shapes everything from executive incentives to how firms respond to social and environmental externalities.

What this topic covers

• Shareholder primacy versus stakeholder theory
• Enlightened shareholder value as a middle position
• Benefit corporations and other institutional responses
• Open empirical debates about stakeholder-oriented governance