Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good

What is a business for? On day one of an economics course a new student is taught the answer: to maximize shareholder profit. But this single idea that pervades all our thinking about the role of the corporation, is fundamentally wrong, argues Colin Mayer. Constraining the firm to a single narrow objective has had wide-ranging and damaging consequences; economic, environmental, political, and social.

Prosperity challenges the fundamentals of business thinking. It also sets out a positive new agenda, demonstrating that the corporation is in a unique and powerful position to promote economic and social wellbeing in its fullest sense, for customers, for future generations, as well as for shareholders.

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 agenda for corporations themselves, and for the regulatory frameworks that will enable them to do this. Drawing together insights from business, law, and economics, science, philosophy, and history, he shows how the corporation can realize its full potential to contribute to the economic and social wellbeing of the many, not just the few.

Prosperity is as much a discussion of how to create and run successful businesses as it is a guide to policymaking to fix the broken system.