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Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

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Re: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

#131

Post by simonebrunozzi »

It's "funny" to read about this, as in my spare time this past weekend (and sparely for a number of months now) I was thinking about creating a non-profit/foundation focused on "reducing the environmental impact" of workers by 10x, as a way to combat climate change. The basic idea is to have companies "pledge" to vastly reduce the overall environmental footprint of their workers, either by direct action, or by buying or investing in initiatives that provide the same effect (a-là buying carbon credits to offset CO2 emission).

I don't feel ready to discuss it in greater details; however, if any of you has experience in setting up non-profits and/or foundations (I am based in San Francisco), I would love to talk to you.

Also, if any of you think it's a great idea, feel free to ping me.

MyHNusername at gmail.

Re: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

#132

Post by clairity »

strenholme wrote: post #99

My father is from a generation where, from the day he got hired to the day he retired, 45 years later, he worked for the same employer. That changed in the 1990s. That changed in the 1990s because companies no longer valued long term commitments. The famous example is IBM laying off, in bulk, countless long-term employees in the interest of increasing their bottom line. The only way I was able to get a pay raise in t…

> "That changed in the 1990s."

it really started changing (slowly) in the 70s as a reaction to the free-wheeling 60s. 1980 was the major inflection point with ronald reagan's election as president, which ushered in trickle-down economics as national dogma.

Re: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

#133

Post by throwaway2048 »

wanche112 wrote: post #74

This is terrific move by the CEOs. Why most of Hacker News readers are so synical about the statement. It is true that at the end, CEO's fundamental purpose is still on generating values to shareholders. But this statement signals a change in its way to achieve it: focus on customer, and employees with long term perspective, instead of short term stock market gain. The statement says CEO can do actions that can be ha…

change requires actions, not words, especially not words as subjective, hypothetical and open ended as these.

These corporations could start doing better, today, without a round of self congratulation about how they are gonna make tomorrow better first.

Re: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

#134

Post by [deleted] »

dougmwne wrote: post #34

...it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Public corporations are not going to stop being paperclip maximizers until we legally and economically force them to stop. This is absolutely nothing but an attempt to divert public anger away from any new regulation that would force companies to deliver more value to society and less to shareholders. Sadly, no different than greenwashing.

[deleted]

Re: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

#135

Post by dhimes »

phamilton wrote: post #72
analogwzrd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're serious about decreasing the importance of shareholder value, then they'll re-design executive and management compensation to be tied less to the company stock price.

I wonder if there's a way to tie the other pieces into shareholder value. ESPP is an easy way to let employees see upside when the stock does well. How could we tie serving customers to stock value? Being good partners? It may be that we can't, and therefore stock price is a bad metric focus on.

Personally I like the idea of profit-sharing.

Re: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

#136

Post by stickfigure »

joshuamorton wrote: post #115
ditonal wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more strongly. I tend to get harshly downvoted when I bring up Google on Hacker News (since it employs a disproportionate amount of Bay Area engineers that hang out here and then get defensive about it), but no other company did I see quite the disconnect between what they SAY they aspire to and how they ACT. Google has built an incredibly strong PR brand on being the "good guys", a "not a convention…

I feel like your argument about maven falls apart because google really did stop working on maven, while amazon didn't. In other words, execs said "here are our values", employees came back and said that maven didn't live up to those values and begrudgingly, kicking and screaming even, execs agreed, or at least capitulated. It would certainly be better if employees didn't have to remind executives of the values they…

You make it sound like these value judgements are obvious. There are plenty of people on HN and even inside Google that do not find anything objectionable about building weapons.

Do you think Richard Feynman was a bad person because he helped build the atom bomb?

Re: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

#137

Post by anthonypasq »

dsr_ wrote: post #114
whatshisface wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would all of these CEOs from random companies even be in the same room? In a free market leadership doesn't exist that high, companies aren't supposed to coordinate at that level.

In the USA most companies and corporations are effectively feudal. This is a meeting of dukes and earls attempting to avoid a socialist revolution through coordinated PR, which has been quite effective for the last 75 years or so. Note that most public companies have institutional investors as the largest component of their ownership; such investors tend to own all the major competitors. GM: top 5 are Capital World I…

> but the right of ownership for a large percentage of the USA's economy is a thing that he directs.

Umm, no. Unless you have a very different idea of what "large percentage" means.

Re: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

#138

Post by joshuamorton »

stickfigure wrote: post #136
joshuamorton wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like your argument about maven falls apart because google really did stop working on maven, while amazon didn't. In other words, execs said "here are our values", employees came back and said that maven didn't live up to those values and begrudgingly, kicking and screaming even, execs agreed, or at least capitulated. It would certainly be better if employees didn't have to remind executives of the values they…

You make it sound like these value judgements are obvious. There are plenty of people on HN and even inside Google that do not find anything objectionable about building weapons. Do you think Richard Feynman was a bad person because he helped build the atom bomb?

I don't think you're taking the strongest possible interpretation of my statements.

The person I responded to appears to disagree with maven. But they used googles actions as a negative thing, when in the end those actions aligned with his values.

Re: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

#139

Post by dv_dt »

wiremine wrote: post #23

You can be cynical about this, and a healthy amount of skepticism is warranted given the authorship. That said, it would be interesting (healthy?) to discuss/debate the merits of the actual statements: * Delivering value to our customers. We will further the tradition of American companies leading the way in meeting or exceeding customer expectations. * Investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them f…

One thing that comes to main is taht the companies should, for example, adopt the German model of having a percentage of board-level seats for representation of the employees.

Re: Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation

#140

Post by basseq »

From today's Money Stuff by Matt Levine[1]:

> So when an association of big public-company CEOs gets together and declares that corporations should serve the community, take care of the environment, and be responsible to employees and customers, not just shareholders, that might be because the CEOs have thought it over and decided that employees and the environment are getting a raw deal, but it is also possible that the CEOs have thought it over and decided that shareholders are annoying.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-19/we-loo...

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