The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Sat, 02 May 2026 11:30:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-photography-4-e1706898544564-1-32x32.png The Roundtable’s Stakeholderism Rhetoric is Empty, Thankfully – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 The Roundtable’s Stakeholderism Rhetoric is Empty, Thankfully https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/11/22/the-roundtables-stakeholderism-rhetoric-is-empty-thankfully/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-roundtables-stakeholderism-rhetoric-is-empty-thankfully https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2019/11/22/the-roundtables-stakeholderism-rhetoric-is-empty-thankfully/#comments Fri, 22 Nov 2019 13:52:30 +0000 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/?p=124585?d=20230309153623EST Posted by Jesse Fried (Harvard Law School), on Friday, November 22, 2019
Editor's Note:

Jesse Fried is the Dane Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. This post was authored by Professor Fried.

This summer, the Business Roundtable released an updated “Statement on the Purpose of the Corporation” that disavows the Roundtable’s longstanding endorsement of shareholder primacy—the notion that corporations should principally serve shareholders.

The Statement changes precisely nothing. But that’s a good thing. Firms and the broader economy would suffer if CEOs could unilaterally disempower shareholders.

The Statement was signed by 181 CEOs, including Apple’s Tim Cook and JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, who committed “to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders—customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders.” The CEOs appeared to be demoting their own shareholders, forcing them to compete with various other stakeholders for managers’ affections.

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