Try free for 30 days
-
Taming the Octopus
- The Long Battle for the Soul of the Corporation
- Narrated by: Jon Vertullo
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $24.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
The untold story of how efforts to hold big business accountable changed American capitalism.
In this vivid and surprising history, we meet twentieth-century activists, investors, executives, and workers who fought over a simple question: Is the role of the corporation to deliver profits to shareholders, or something more? On one side were "business statesmen" who believed corporate largess could solve social problems. On the other were libertarian intellectuals such as Milton Friedman and his oft-forgotten contemporary, Henry Manne, whose theories justified the ruthless tactics of a growing class of corporate raiders. But Kyle Edward Williams reveals that before the "activist investor" emerged as a capitalist archetype, Civil Rights groups used a similar playbook for different ends, buying shares to change a company from within.
As a rising tide of activists pushed corporations to account for societal harms from napalm to environmental pollution to inequitable hiring, a new idea emerged: that managers could maximize value for society while still turning a maximal profit. This elusive ideal, "stakeholder capitalism," still dominates our headlines today. Williams's necessary history equips us to reconsider democracy's tangled relationship with capitalism.