In Beyond Profit Motives, ___ Michigan Law Review ___ (forthcoming), available at https://tinyurl.com/29pyycxb, Maryland Law Professor William Moon writes:
Generations of legal scholars have debated both the origins of business corporations and their purpose. Professor Stephen Bainbridge’s new book is a substantial contribution to this literature and an essential read for anyone who wishes to better understand a controversy that has an immense impact on how movers and shakers of today’s largest corporations make decisions.
Bainbridge, one of the most prolific and influential corporate law professors in the United States, throws cold water on burgeoning scholarly literature calling for corporations to embrace corporate social responsibility. . . .
Bainbridge synthesizes familiar policy arguments, while teeing up some more novel arguments. We see in these chapters that Bainbridge is far from an ideological zealot. He carefully deconstructs several theoretical building blocks supporting the shareholder value maximization paradigm and abandons ones he finds unpersuasive. . . .
The essay then goes on to offer an alternative framework based a new approach to concession theory the author believes might provide a stronger foundation for stakeholder capitalism, but concludes:
For those committed to stakeholder capitalism, the book is a powerful reminder that a different theoretical foundation is needed to build a house that justifies infusing social responsibility into business corporations.
I need to ponder the neo-concession theory a bit more, but overall I'm very honored.
