The Future of the Corporation and the Economics of Purpose
公司的未来和目标经济学

ABSTRACT This article examines the economic underpinnings of the concept of corporate purpose, which has gained increasing attention from business academics, practitioners and policymakers. It argues that there are fundamental reasons for reconceptualizing the purpose of business in the future which derive from the changing nature of business and the market failures to which it gives rise. It suggests that regulation is proving increasingly inadequate at correcting market failures, and the traditional separation between economic efficiency and distribution that underpins policy formulation is untenable. Instead, the article sets out how appropriately defined notions of corporate purpose can help to promote not only better social outcomes but also enhanced functioning of firms and markets. It describes a set of principles that provide a comprehensive framework for reforming business around credible commitments to corporate purpose. The reformulation of the corporation has profound implications for the macroeconomic performance of economies as well as the microeconomics of firms and markets.
摘要 本文研究了企业目标概念的经济基础，该概念已受到商业学者、从业人员和政策制定者越来越多的关注。它认为，重新构想未来商业目的的根本原因源于商业性质的变化以及由此导致的市场失灵。它表明，事实证明，监管在纠正市场失灵方面越来越不足，而支撑政策制定的经济效率和分配之间的传统分离是站不住脚的。相反，本文阐述了适当定义的企业目标概念如何不仅有助于促进更好的社会成果，而且有助于增强公司和市场的运作。它描述了一套原则，这些原则为围绕对企业目标的可信承诺进行业务改革提供了一个全面的框架。公司的重新表述对经济体的宏观经济表现以及公司和市场的微观经济学具有深远的影响。

Keywords: distribution, efficiency, macroeconomics, market failures, purpose, regulation
关键词：分配、效率、宏观经济学、市场失灵、目的、监管

The last few years have seen an intensified debate around the future of the corporation. Underpinning this is a growing concern around three sets of issues - rising environmental degradation, inequality and mistrust in business. This has been exacerbated by the recent experience of the coronavirus pandemic and prompted a reconsideration of both the nature of our capitalist system and the role of business in it.
过去几年，围绕公司未来的激烈辩论。支撑这一点的是人们对三组问题的日益关注 - 环境恶化加剧、不平等和对企业的不信任。最近的冠状病毒大流行加剧了这种情况，并促使人们重新考虑我们资本主义制度的性质以及企业在其中的作用。

Business and policymakers have responded to this growing concern by seeking reforms to existing models that encourage a greater degree of ethical business practice and stronger enforcement of the rules of the game. In this article, I argue that these reforms are
企业和政策制定者通过寻求对现有模式进行改革来应对这一日益增长的担忧，这些模式鼓励更大程度的道德商业实践和更强有力地执行游戏规则。在本文中，我认为这些改革是

Address for reprints: Colin Mayer, Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies, Said Business School, University of Oxford (colin.mayer@sbs.ox.ac.uk).
重印地址：Colin Mayer，牛津大学赛义德商学院 Peter Moores 管理学教授 （colin.mayer@sbs.ox.ac.uk）。
insufficient on their own. Instead, in considering the future of the corporation, we should start from a more fundamental question about why business exists and is created, what it does and aspires to become, namely its purpose, and then, consider the resulting changes to business practice, policy, education and research that are required to deliver it.
他们自己是不够的。相反，在考虑公司的未来时，我们应该从一个更基本的问题开始，即企业为什么存在和被创造，它做什么和渴望成为什么，即它的目的，然后，考虑由此产生的商业实践、政策、教育和研究的变化，这些都是实现它所需的。

There is a growing realization of the fundamental nature of business purpose. In a matter of just 18 months from the beginning of 2019, many of the largest corporations have discarded the conventional Milton Friedman $(1962,1970)$$(1962,1970)$(1962,1970)(1962,1970) doctrine that there is one and only social purpose of business to increase profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game in favour of a view that corporate purpose should reflect the interests of stakeholders as well as shareholders (see Business Roundtable, 2019, and Freeman, 1983 for a discussion of stakeholder theories). This has provoked a mixture of admiration, cynicism, scepticism and opposition (Council of Institutional Investors, 2019). In particular, Bebchuk and Tallarita (2020) have recently critiqued stakeholder theories on the grounds that they are either irrelevant or impractical. Their irrelevance stems from an ‘instrumental’ interpretation of stakeholder theories that they are part of a ‘win-win’ in which promoting stakeholder interests contributes to the success of the company for the benefit of all of its parties, including its shareholders. In other words, stakeholder theories are just a form of ‘enlightened’ shareholder capitalism in which a recognition of the importance of stakeholders is beneficial for shareholders as well as for stakeholders. There is, therefore, no inconsistency between stakeholder theory and shareholder primacy.
人们越来越意识到商业目标的基本性质。从 2019 年初开始的短短 18 个月内，许多最大的公司已经抛弃了传统的米尔顿·弗里德曼 （Milton Friedman $(1962,1970)$$(1962,1970)$(1962,1970)(1962,1970) ） 学说，即只要符合游戏规则，企业只有一个且唯一的社会目的就是增加利润，转而支持企业目标应反映利益相关者和股东利益的观点（见商业圆桌会议， 2019 年和 Freeman，1983 年对利益相关者理论的讨论）。这引发了钦佩、愤世嫉俗、怀疑和反对的混合（机构投资者委员会，2019 年）。特别是，Bebchuk 和 Tallarita （2020） 最近批评了利益相关者理论，理由是它们要么无关紧要，要么不切实际。它们的不相关性源于对利益相关者理论的“工具性”解释，即它们是“双赢”的一部分，在这种理论中，促进利益相关者的利益有助于公司的成功，使包括股东在内的所有各方受益。换句话说，利益相关者理论只是“开明”股东资本主义的一种形式，在这种资本主义中，认识到利益相关者的重要性对股东和利益相关者都有利。因此，利益相关者理论和股东至上之间并不存在矛盾。

The impracticality of stakeholder theories comes when one goes beyond this and suggests a ‘pluralistic’ approach in which the interests of stakeholders should be furthered in their own right, potentially at the expense of shareholders. Bebchuk and Tallarita argue that this creates impossible trade-offs for companies in trying to balance, for example, the interests of employees against customers in raising the wages paid to the former and the prices charged to the latter, current versus future employees in purchasing new equipment that benefits the latter at the expense of the former, and societies that suffer environmental harm from productive activities that create new jobs for employees.
利益相关者理论的不切实际之处在于，人们超越了这一点，提出了一种“多元化”的方法，在这种方法中，利益相关者的利益应该以他们自己的权利得到促进，而可能以牺牲股东的利益为代价。Bebchuk 和 Tallarita 认为，这为公司创造了不可能的权衡，例如，在提高支付给前者的工资和向后者收取的价格时，员工的利益与客户的利益，在购买新设备时与未来员工在购买新设备时以牺牲前者为代价使后者受益。 以及因为员工创造新就业机会的生产活动而遭受环境破坏的社会。

Milton Friedman in addition asserted that companies have no legitimate basis on which to make such trade-offs because they are not elected or empowered to do so. Instead, underlying the Friedman assertion is an economic concept of the economic efficiency of companies maximizing profits and governments setting the rules of the game within which companies pursue this goal. It underpins the liberal economics position regarding free markets, competition, privatisation, deregulation, taxation and public expenditure and it is the basis of the so-called Washington Consensus (Williamson, 2003).
米尔顿·弗里德曼 （Milton Friedman） 进一步断言，公司没有合法的依据来做出这种权衡，因为它们没有被选举或授权这样做。相反，弗里德曼断言的基础是一个经济概念，即公司实现利润最大化的经济效率，以及政府制定公司追求这一目标的游戏规则。它支撑了自由主义经济学在自由市场、竞争、私有化、放松管制、税收和公共支出方面的立场，它是所谓的华盛顿共识的基础（Williamson，2003 年）。

This paper argues that the stakeholder-shareholder debate is vacuous and misses the point. It is the wrong framing of the question. We need to start by defining what we are trying to achieve. Once we have clarity on that then the contribution of different parties to the firm and the basis on which their interests should be determined and traded-off becomes evident. In particular, the separation between business on the one hand as being solely concerned with financial performance and the state with broader matters of social welfare emerges as fundamentally flawed. It cannot be justified from either a position of political legitimacy and accountability, or a view about the inefficiency of conflating the objectives of companies. The efficient functioning of markets requires that the
本文认为，利益相关者与股东的争论是空洞的，没有抓住重点。这是对这个问题的错误框架。我们需要从定义我们想要实现的目标开始。一旦我们明确了这一点，那么不同方对公司的贡献以及确定和权衡他们利益的基础就变得很明显了。特别是，企业一方面只关心财务业绩，而国家则关注更广泛的社会福利问题，这似乎存在根本性的缺陷。无论是从政治合法性和问责制的立场来看，还是从混为一谈公司目标的低效率的角度来看，都不能证明这是合理的。市场的有效运作要求
business of business is not just business and the governance of business is the business of government.
企业的业务不仅仅是企业，企业的治理是政府的事业。

In critiquing traditional views of the firm, Ghoshal et al. (1999) argue that efficiency focused management engage in a zero-sum game of value appropriation and static efficiency in which profits come at the expense of employees and wider society. In contrast, they promote collective action coordinated by companies’ purposes, which they see as a source for value creation, both for corporations and for society as a whole, and the starting point of a new moral contract between them. Ghoshal wrote extensively about the importance of purpose in recognising companies’ moral responses to their broadly defined responsibilities as against solely pursuing commercial opportunities (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1994). He was highly critical of management scholarship for its ‘pessimistic view of human nature’ and the potential for developing purposeful, goal oriented behavioural theories of the firm (Ghoshal, 2005).
在批评公司的传统观点时，Ghoshal 等人（1999 年）认为，以效率为中心的管理参与了价值挪用和静态效率的零和博弈，其中利润是以牺牲员工和更广泛的社会为代价的。相反，它们促进由公司目标协调的集体行动，他们认为这些目标为公司和整个社会创造价值的源泉，也是它们之间新道德契约的起点。Ghoshal 撰写了大量关于目标的重要性，它认识到公司对其广义责任的道德反应，而不是仅仅追求商业机会（Bartlett 和 Ghoshal，1994 年）。他强烈批评管理学术，因为它“对人性的悲观”以及为公司发展有目的的、以目标为导向的行为理论的潜力（Ghoshal，2005）。

Henderson and Van den Steen (2015) consider purpose as ‘a concrete goal or objective for the firm that reaches beyond profit maximisation’. Purpose is the reason for being, ‘not what you do, but who you are’ (Leider, 1998), and the reason for the organisation to come together as the intersection point between ‘hard’ elements such as vision, strategy and operational priorities (Mourkogiannis, 2008), which drive performance, and the ‘soft’ elements such as brand, values and culture, which work to create a distinctive organisational climate (Ready and Truelove, 2011).
Henderson 和 Van den Steen （2015） 认为目标是“公司超越利润最大化的具体目标或目的”。目标是存在的原因，“不是你做什么，而是你是谁”（Leider，1998），也是组织作为“硬”元素（如愿景、战略和运营优先事项）之间的交汇点（Mourkogiannis，2008）和“软”元素（如品牌、价值观和文化）之间的交汇点，这些元素致力于创造独特的组织氛围（Ready 和 Truelove， 2011).

Inspiring though these notions of purpose may be, they lack precision. Purpose should be neither mundane nor aspirational. It is not purely descriptive of what a business does - a mission statement - nor unrealistic about what it seeks to do - an aspirational vision statement to save the world. It is about solving problems, ‘to produce profitable solutions to the problems of people and planet’ and ‘not to profit from producing problems for people or planet’ (British Academy, 2018; Mayer, 2018).
尽管这些目标概念可能鼓舞人心，但它们缺乏精确性。目标既不平凡，也不抱负。它不是纯粹描述企业做什么 - 使命宣言 - 也不是不切实际地描述它寻求做什么 - 拯救世界的雄心勃勃的愿景声明。它是关于解决问题，“为人类和地球的问题提供有利可图的解决方案”，以及“不从为人类或地球制造问题中获利”（英国学院，2018 年;Mayer，2018 年）。

Purpose is, therefore, about finding ways of solving problems profitably where profits are defined net of the costs of avoiding and remedying problems. By defining purpose and profits in this way, purpose is associated with enhancing the wellbeing and prosperity of shareholders, society and the natural world. It does not disadvantage any party because profits are only legitimate if they are not earned at the expense of other parties and corporate purposes are only valid if they are profitable in this sense.
因此，目标是找到有利可图地解决问题的方法，其中利润是在避免和补救问题的成本下定义的。通过以这种方式定义目的和利润，目的与提高股东、社会和自然界的福祉和繁荣有关。它不会对任何一方不利，因为只有当利润不是以牺牲其他方为代价赚取的利润时，利润才是合法的，而公司目的只有在这种意义上是有利可图的时才有效。

Any purposes that satisfy these two conditions are, therefore, beneficial. They can vary from those that deliver maximum profits for shareholders, since profits are not earned at the expense of others, to those that deliver maximum benefits for other parties and minimal returns for shareholders. In Bebchuk and Tallarita’s (2020) terms, purposes can support both instrumental stakeholder concepts that correspond with shareholder primacy and stakeholder plurality where parties other than shareholders are the primary beneficiaries. In neither case, does any party benefit at the expense of another and, therefore, the complex trade-offs that concerned Bebchuk and Tallarita about stakeholder plurality do not arise.
因此，满足这两个条件的任何目的都是有益的。它们可能有所不同，既有为股东带来最大利润（因为利润不是以牺牲他人为代价获得的），也有为其他方带来最大利益、为股东带来最小回报的回报。用 Bebchuk 和 Tallarita（2020 年）的术语来说，目的既可以支持与股东至上相对应的工具性利益相关者概念，也可以支持与股东以外的各方是主要受益人的利益相关者多元化相对应的利益相关者多元化。在这两种情况下，任何一方都不会以牺牲另一方的利益为代价而受益，因此，不会出现 Bebchuk 和 Tallarita 对利益相关者多元化的复杂权衡。