Building Respected Companies

The current financial crisis has deep macroeconomic roots, but the dominant view of the firm has made the crisis deeper and more devastating. Over the past few decades, maximizing shareholder value has become the main objective of the firm. Chief executives have been keen on this objective because their economic incentives have been clearly associated with stock market performance. Unfortunately, this has driven many CEOs to make terrible decisions based on short-termism and greed. In this way, the firm has become the object of anger, criticism and cynicism. In Building Respected Companies, Jordi Canals argues that we must address this problem by developing companies that serve society, not just their shareholders. This requires a new perspective of what a firm is, what the purpose of the firm in society should be and what the role of the board of directors and senior executives should be.

Author: Jordi Canals
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 06/30/2010
Pages: 282
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.30lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780521192101

About the Author
Canals, Jordi: - Jordi Canals is the Dean and Professor of General Management at IESE Business School. His areas of interest are corporate governance, globalization and corporate strategy. He is the author of thirteen books, including Universal Banks (1996) and Managing Corporate Growth (2000). A Fulbright Fellow, he was a research fellow at Harvard Business School and a guest scholar at The Brookings Institution and the World Bank. He was also a member of the task force on corporate governance in Spain (2002-2003).