What is business for? Day one of a business course will tell you: it is to maximise shareholder profit. This single idea pervades all our thinking and teaching about business around the world but it is fundamentally wrong, Colin Mayer argues. It has had disastrous and damaging consequences for our economies, environment, politics, and societies.
In this urgent call for reform, Prosperity challenges the fundamentals of business thinking. It sets out a comprehensive new agenda for establishing the corporation as a unique and powerful force for promoting economic and social wellbeing in its fullest sense - for customers and communities, today and in the future.
First Professor and former Dean of the Säid Business School in Oxford, Mayer is a leading figure in the global discussion about the purpose and role of the corporation. In Prosperity, he presents a radical and carefully considered prescription for corporations, their ownership, governance, finance, and regulation. Drawing together insights from business, law, economics, science, philosophy, and history, he shows how the corporation can realize its full potential to contribute to economic and social wellbeing of the many, not just the few.
Prosperity tells us not only how to create and run successful businesses but also how policy can get us there and fix our broken system.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198866824
Number of pages: 288
Dimensions: 215 x 135 x 25 mm
Weight: 310 g
Language: English
Review from previous edition "Mayer of the Saïd Business School at Oxford is one of the world's foremost critics of the idea that the aim of companies is to maximise shareholder value. This, he argues cogently, represents a betrayal of one of humanity's most extraordinary inventions." - Martin Wolf, Books of the Year 2018, The Financial Times
The book is far more than a manifesto for change ... Mayer's book performs a great service. - Richard Bronk, the Society of Professional Economists, Reading Room (open access)
"A powerful reply to the steadily increasing criticism of free market business... So far, the defenders of capitalism have failed to find a convincing voice or to offer any significant ways to improve how business is perceived. Now Colin Mayer provides answers and a coherent manifesto for change." - Peter Chadwick, IEDP Book Reviews
"A wonderful manifesto for change and essential reading for any who remain to be convinced that business can - and should - be a force for a societal good. One of the most insightful and comprehensive accounts yet of how - and why - the corporation needs to change if it is to meet the needs and expectations of a new era. Thoughtful and well-argued, Mayer has done the cause of enlightened capitalism great service." - Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever
Guns, Germs and Steel
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
The Making of the English Working Class
Superfreakonomics
The Wealth of Nations
The Shock Doctrine
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
This Changes Everything
Game Theory
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
The Essential Keynes
The Road to Serfdom
Why Nations Fail
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