Benefit Corporation Law and Governance: Pursuing Profit with Purpose [Hardcover]

Corporations with a Conscience

Corporations today are embedded in a system of shareholder primacy. Nonfinancial concerns—like worker well-being, environmental impact, and community health—are secondary to the imperative to maximize share price. Benefit corporation governance reorients corporations so that they work for the interests of all stakeholders, not just shareholders.

This is the first authoritative guide to this new form of governance. It is an invaluable guide for legal and financial professionals, as well as interested entrepreneurs and investors who want to understand how purposeful corporate governance can be put into practice.“Important new ideas that can change the world are both misunderstood and fragile. Understanding makes them stronger but alone doesn’t guarantee that they will make the difference they could and should. Benefit corporations are one of those new ideas and one sorely needed if the capital markets are going to contribute to, rather than detract from, sustainable development. Rick’s book elegantly explains this idea to a wide range of audiences, thereby making it stronger. The work he and B Lab are doing makes it stronger still. Thanks to them, I am hopeful that the benefit corporation can be for the 21st century what the traditional corporation was for the 20th.”
—Robert Eccles, Chairman, Arabesque Partners

“This book is the most important book about corporate law in decades, if not ever.”
—John Montgomery, Chairman Emeritus, Montgomery and Hansen

“The magnitude of the crises impacting our world, and particularly our country, is certainly not disputed—by liberals or conservatives, men or women, African Americans or White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, members of the 1 percent or the working poor. The nature of such crises is also not in doubt—the fact that the climate is changing and negatively ls4