Corporations maximize shareholder returns—or so goes the conventional wisdom. It was not always so. In the middle decades of the last century, lawmakers, business leaders, and journalists agreed that the nation's largest and most powerful corporations had obligations to a raft of stakeholders that included (in addition to shareholders) employees, customers, and the localities in which they had set up shop. Some historians have labeled this consensus “corporate liberalism”; contemporaries called it “social responsibility.” Still others, including, most notably, Alfred D. Chandler Jr., regarded these corporate obligations as emblematic of a new stage in economic development—“managerial capitalism”—whose origins could be traced back to the railroad, the country's first “big business.” This consensus had durable consequences, as Kenneth J. Lipartito and others demonstrated in Corporate Responsibility: The American Experience (2012), a multiauthor survey of shifting assumptions regarding corporate governance in the United States from the colonial era to the present.

公司可以最大限度地提高股东回报，传统的智慧也是如此。并非总是如此。在上个世纪中叶，立法者，商业领袖和新闻记者一致认为，美国最大，最有实力的公司有义务承担众多利益相关者的责任，这些利益相关者包括（除股东之外）员工，客户以及他们所在的地区已经开店了。一些历史学家将这种共识称为“企业自由主义”。同时代人称其为“社会责任”。其他人，包括最著名的小阿尔弗雷德·钱德勒（Alfred D. Chandler Jr.），则将这些公司义务视为经济发展新阶段（“管理资本主义”）的象征，其起源可以追溯到该国第一条铁路“大企业” 。” 正如肯尼思·J（Kenneth J.公司责任：《美国经验》（2012年），一项多作者调查，涉及从殖民时代到现在的美国有关公司治理的各种假设的转变。