THE PURPOSE DEBATE Introduction

Where corporate America has been, and where it needs to go.

Spurred on by political activists, academics, lobbyists, regulators, employees, consumers, professional directorship, governance gurus, proxy advisers and, most notably, large institutional investors, environmental, social and governance issues have commandeered boardroom conversations. This unlikely and unwieldly alliance is trying to upend the decades-old doctrine of shareholder primacy, first put forward in 1932 by Adolf A. Berle, Jr., and Gardiner C. Means, and then promulgated by Milton Friedman in the early 1970s.

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