Why “wealth bias” is a holdover from a pre-democratic past—and how to restore a healthier balance of power: “Thought-provoking . . . well-documented and readable.” —Library Journal Wealth inequality, corporate welfare, and industrial pollution are symptoms—the fevers and chills of the economy. The underlying illness, says Business Ethics magazine founder Marjorie Kelly, is shareholder primacy: the corporate drive to make profits for shareholders no matter who pays the cost. In The Divine Right of Capital, Kelly argues that focusing on the interests of stockholders to the exclusion of everyone else’s interests is a form of discrimination based on property or wealth. She shows how this bias is held by our institutional structures, much as they once held biases against African Americans and women. The Divine Right of Capital exposes six aristocratic principles that corporations are built on, principles that we would never accept in our modern democratic society but which we accept unquestioningly in our economy. Wealth bias is a holdover from our pre-democratic past. It has enabled shareholders to become a kind of economic aristocracy. Kelly shows how to design more equitable alternatives—new property rights, new forms of corporate governance, new ways of looking at corporate performance—that build on both free-market and democratic principles. We think of shareholder primacy as the natural law of the free market, much as our forebears thought of monarchy as the most natural form of government. But in The Divine Right of Capital, Kelly brilliantly demonstrates that it is no more “natural” than any other human creation. People designed this system and people can change it. We need a change of mind as profound as that of the American Revolution—and this book provides practical guidance to help employees and communities change corporate governance and unfetter the genius of the free market.

She calls for a movement to build economic democracy in two stages: first, by raising consciousness about wealth discrimination, and second, by aiming for structural change in corporate institutions."--BOOK JACKET.

Laura Hartman's: Perspectives in Business Ethics offers a foundation in ethical thought, followed by a variety of perspectives on difficult ethical dilemmas in both the personal and professional context. This anthology encourages the reader to "critically evaluate each perspective using his or her own personal ethical theory base." Instructors who favor an interactive, discussion-oriented approach to the ethics course will appreciate the different perspectives offered by the Hartman text. This book incorporates the traditional text with definitions and explanations, and combines it with short and long cases, reprints of both traditional and innovative articles, and nontraditional materials such as song lyrics, excerpts from classical literature, and short stories. This text focuses on involving as many views as possible in ethical situations or decisions.

Publisher description

Visionary entrepreneur and Working Assets co-founder Peter Barnes redefines the debate about the costs and benefits of managing the "commons"--the sum of all we inherit together and are morally obligated to pass on to the next generation. This book offers viable solutions to the most pressing economic, environmental and social concerns today.