Stewardship: the natural evolution of fiduciary duty?

In the wake of the recent financial crisis and the subsequent Kay Review into long-term decision making in capital markets, the Law Commission in the UK has been charged with performing a root and branch review of fiduciary law. This is a huge opportunity to inspect the essential plumbing of our modern democratic capitalist system.

Getting there from here       

The long-running debate over fiduciary duty reminds me of the familiar joke about asking for directions from a less than helpful local: “if I was going there I wouldn't start from here.” Those of us who look at fiduciary law through the lens of business ethics may wish we could uninvent it and simply start afresh. To do so we need the collective moral imagination to conceive anew the nature of the fiduciary relationship; not in a way that dilutes or diffuses accountability but instead clarifies and strengthens it. It is to view the fiduciary relationship as just that, marked by mutual trust and respect.

The notion of a fiduciary can be greatly enriched if we reassert our shared humanity into real-life economic relations. As we do, the relationship between ‘self’ and ‘other’ is free to evolve into something we might usefully call ‘stewardship’. It is a phenotype of the fiduciary genotype. A steward inherits the same essential traits of a fiduciary: service to others. But unlike its forebear a steward can be trusted to do so. The real task for the lawyers is to figure out how the legal framework can facilitate the development of trusting relationships, rather than simply seeking to enforce them. I suggest the ascent of man-as-fiduciary towards man-as-steward proceeds through five evolutionary generations.

1 - Fiduciary Duty: to serve the interests of an other

Grounded in the principal-agent view of contracts in financial economics...

• Interests are ‘given’ and delegated by the principal to an agent with requisite skills and specialist knowledge.
• In its narrowest terms, the ‘interest’ is in private property – an asset over which a legitimate property right exists.
• The interests served by the fiduciary are the ‘self-interests’ of the principal only.
• Agents are similarly motivated by self-interests and are inherently self-serving and opportunistic.
• The agent-as-fiduciary must be incentivised, including by force of law, to serve the self-interests of the principal.
• These mechanisms are sub-optimal; they impose agency costs on contracting.

According to the basic economic model, the principal is an isolated individual, save for his entrusted agent. No other relationships are necessary to the standard agency model. Using his specialist knowledge or skills, with some degree of discretion, the agent-as-fiduciary is expected to act prudently and in the best interests of the principal; exercising the sole virtue of undivided loyalty with respect to his self-interests.

Of course this is simplified picture of real human relationships: both parties are in reality situated in a wider social setting. And even those who would defend a narrow concept of fiduciary duty concede that fiduciaries must at least respect the legal and social norms of civilised behaviour. This is to admit that principals and their agents stand in relationship with not just one but a range of others. It is the case that the fiduciary relationship imposes special obligations on fiduciaries. But contracting takes place in a wider social milieu in which others may also assert certain claims or rights. In some cases, these rights might be secured by a corresponding duty of care on fiduciaries to take reasonable steps to avoid inflicting harms on third-parties (the common law tort of negligence). Participation in civilised society attaches at least some minimum duties beyond those explicitly expressed in private, legally enforceable contracts. Both principal and agent are economic and moral agents.

As my local MP, Jesse Norman, recently remarked in the Daily Telegraph, making profits has never been the sole duty of companies, or the fiduciaries that run them. Indeed, if companies' only responsibility were to maximise shareholder returns in the name of financial wealth creation, society should happily allow them to avoid tax and shift environmental costs on to someone else to the maximum extent permitted by law. But it doesn't and for good reason. As social institutions business cannot afford to ignore the norms, expectations and indeed values of wider society. Arguably it never has.

2 - Enlightenment: the interests of the self are tied to those of others

Thus, the principal as a nexus of relationships...

• Self-interests are given but contingent on those of others.
• Human behaviour and conduct is governed by institutions, formal and informal.
• Property is a ‘bundle of rights’ which includes control surrendered to a fiduciary.
• Rights and duties imply mutually respected reciprocal obligations.
• Contracts may be explicit and implicit.

The simplifying axioms of economic rationality and behaviour have never been seriously advanced as a full and accurate portrayal of the human condition. Neither are the assumptions made for the purposes of economic analysis intended to faithfully describe the richness of human experience, character or motivation. And neither are they normative. The self-interests of rational economic actors are 'enlightened' only by the acknowledgement that humans do not live isolated existences. Our actions and decisions usually affect others; and the behaviour of others usually affect us. We cannot so easily isolate the interests of ‘self’ from those of ‘other’. Moreover, just as self-interest should not be confused with greed, neither should enlightened self-interest be viewed as a form of altruism.

The duty of the enlightened fiduciary is to still to serve the self-interests of a single principal, though now aware that his actions may have consequences for others too. To the extent that those consequences may be detrimental to the interests of the principal, either now or in the distant future, they must be taken into account by the fiduciary in the exercise of his responsibilities. Nevertheless, it is stretching the point somewhat to suggest that either actor has somehow become 'socially responsible'. The principal is still motivated by the interests of 'self'; and the enlightened fiduciary is still bound by the duties of prudence and loyalty to serve those interests alone. And as long as human behaviour is governed by the assumptions of agency theory he must be suitably incentivised to do so. Trust remains at a premium.

And so does legitimacy. Now ‘enlightened’ to the wider interests, claims, and duties of countless others the principal is obliged to instruct his fiduciary to ‘take account’ of them. On receiving such an instruction, a loyal fiduciary must nevertheless seek to preserve the self-interests of the one he serves. The interest of the principal must come first whenever a conflict arises: at least until he is expressly instructed otherwise. At best he can try to balance the principal’s interests in the long run with those of others who might be affected by his actions. If they are really to count at all, the interests, claims, rights, etc. of others matter only in a ‘tie-break’ between two alternative courses of action. If the interests of the ‘self’ and ‘other’ can be mutually advanced that is a real bonus.

And so the enlightened fiduciary’s job has just got a lot harder. In the pursuit of the principal’s best interests he is to try to balance or reconcile the interests of others with his principal duty towards the best interests of the principal. The enlightened fiduciary is now accountable to one - and all.
     

3 - Stewardship Theory: serving a common interest

Towards a revised ‘model of man’...

• A richer view of human nature and motivation.
• A steward makes the interests of the ‘other’ his own – psychological interest alignment.
• A focus on the content of human relationships: trust and respect.
• A common interest implies a shared goal.

Once the simplifying assumptions of agency theory are relaxed, a less pessimistic and perhaps more realistic view of human motivation is allowed in. It is one informed as much by psychology and sociology as economics and legal theory. According to stewardship theory, a steward is someone who receives greater satisfaction (or ‘utility’) from serving the interests of the principal than by simply serving his own. Indeed, a steward is a trustworthy agent precisely because he has made the interest of an ‘other’ his own. The principal and his agent, once in a stewardship relationship, in fact share a common interest. But, one might ask, an interest in what exactly?

This insight from stewardship theory goes further than the ‘enlightened’ realisation that we can’t entirely isolate the interests of ‘self’ and ‘other’. Real people – not autonomous ‘agents’ – are motivated by the things they believe in or 'value' as important, fulfilling or meaning-making in their lives. Stewardship shifts the emphasis from external mechanisms of control and enforcement to the personal motivation of an ‘agent’ and the intrinsic rewards he receives from performing his duties. The task of the principal is to inspire a genuine commitment to the sort of shared goal that can satisfy the ‘higher needs’ of a steward.

4 - The Stewardship Chain: recasting both principal and agent

Mutuality of interests allows accountability to flow in two directions...

• Extending the principal-agent relationship upwards and downwards
• Corporate stewards as public fiduciaries
• Who is the principal at the end of the chain? 
• The steward-steward relationship
• Discovering our shared values

Apart from recognising the possibility of a genuinely aligned interest in a mutually agreed goal, stewardship theory permits an extension of this relation from two to multiple actors along a 'stewardship chain'. Each pair of actors along its length may form a steward-steward relationship whenever they share a common interest. This of course means a stewardship chain can in theory only be completed if these interests are held in common along its entire length. But where does the chain of delegated responsibilities end and accountability terminate?

Firstly, looking downwards, the chain ends with the ultimate beneficiary owner, for example individual savers in a pension vehicle governed by trust law. As stewards, the company's management have a 'downstream' duty to serve their interests. But looking upwards it is easy to envisage the terminal ‘principal’ as the public at large or ‘society’. Viewed as a ‘public fiduciary’ a corporation must therefore also act in the 'public interest'. In their role as stewards, corporate management therefore have both upward ‘social responsibilities' to serve the public good and downward responsibilities to serve the interests of its owners.

So, although the notion of a stewardship chain may not diffuse accountability as widely as the ‘stakeholder theory’ of enlightened self-interest, a potential conflict of interest nevertheless remains. Moreover, the stewardship chain breaks down completely if interests are not properly aligned along its length and truly held in common. If this happens, we are rapidly returned to a bleak principal-agent world of mutual distrust, shirking and opportunism. Clearly, company management is still in a tight spot.

One way to resolve their dilemma is to see the chain not so much in linear terms with two dangling ends but rather as a loop. The two loose ends need to be tied together through the formation of a stewardship relationship between the owner-beneficiaries and the public at large. Like the companies they own, investors may be conceived as public fiduciaries subject to an implicit social contract or covenant. True stewardship demands the reconciliation of private self-interest with civic virtue, only possible through processes of engagement and moral deliberation in which the interests and values savers share as citizens can be revealed and discovered. The ultimate owners of capital are in fact persons-in-community not autonomous economic agents. Societies and the global community frequently form institutions that express a commonly held interest in certain social 'goods', reflecting broad agreement on the values they share. Why should the same not be true of the dominant social institution of democratic capitalism: the publicly-owned corporation?
      

 5 - Ethical Stewardship: Rediscovering Purpose

From common interests to a shared purpose...

• A common purpose reflects shared values.
• Shared values are discovered through dialogue. 
• Accountability is responsiveness to societal values.
• A closer integration of ‘ownership and control’.

By inserting the ‘public interest’ into the stewardship chain one can make the normative claim that that both the corporate steward and its owners should both serve the public interest and respect the norms, values, and expectations of society at large. Yet this ‘ethical stewardship’ does not fall into the trap set by ‘enlightened self-interest’and into which stakeholder theory and its various approaches have fallen. That way is marked ‘multi-fiduciary’ and is indeed a paradox. While enlightened self-interest is a welcome riposte to the cruder and narrower interpretations of fiduciary duty, ethical stewardship is in fact closer in many respects to the Friedmanite account of corporate responsibilities.

Ethical stewardship, then, adds to a commitment to service and genuine accountability a strong sense of purpose. Purpose is a motivator. It is how human beings derive a sense of identity, fulfillment and meaning in their lives. The formal purpose of an organisation may have been originally defined by its founders and former owners or through a process of engagement with its current owners. It embodies its values as well as a sense of mission or direction. A shared purpose builds commitment to a common endeavour: it adds tensile strength to the stewardship relation.

Little wonder that companies have rediscovered their interest in the question posed by Charles Handy: “what’s a business for?” It is a question that the Corporation 2020 organisation in the US has set out to answer with welcome clarity. And it is one answered in its own way by the B-Corp movement. It is to define the ‘ultimate ends’ of any business enterprise.

Clarity of purpose also establishes clear lines of accountability between those that ‘own’ the purpose and those charged with fulfilling it. Strictly, purpose should be jointly owned. The shareholding owners must 'own' the purposes to which their capital is being deployed. Ideally, the board should be custodians and defenders of the corporate purpose, upholding and protecting it on behalf of its owners. Above all, the corporate purpose must secure the crucial common interest of end investors and the public at large.

There are any number of candidates for a common purpose and the values or ‘goods’ it represents. Stewardship conceives wealth or value creation in broad terms. Individual companies will express it in their own way, with particular reference to the profitable delivery of specific products and services. Profitability is evidence of the wealth created by business through freely functioning markets. A company cannot attract the capital it needs to fulfill its purpose if it is unable to deliver the financial returns required by its providers.

But stewardship also advances a positive ethic of value creation and contribution to wider society, including but not limited to the material and financial. Ethical stewardship doesn't rule out the perfectly legitimate contribution business makes solely through privately accrued financial wealth. But this isn't wealth creation in the broader sense if its financial contribution is outweighed by wealth destroyed elsewhere: for example, through the social cost of environmental damage or unsafe working conditions.
    

Conclusion: The Role of Citizen Savers

The stewardship relationship between corporations and society-at-large is founded on shared values reflected in a clearly articulated business purpose. Corporate purpose establishes legitimacy and trust with the wider public only if it is accompanied by real accountability for its contribution to the public good. In that regard, the advent of ‘integrated’ financial and sustainability reporting is an important new mechanism for ensuring transparency and developing social trust. It means companies must demonstrate that they are serious about being responsive to the needs and expectations of society within and beyond the marketplace.

The crucial stewardship relation is that which must be forged between saver and society. There is no interface between them as such. Rather, one is the simple aggregation of the other. The best interests of the investment beneficiaries therefore can and must be reconciled with the public interest. Savers-as-citizens surely share an interest in some conception of a common good. And they inevitably share the values of the society in which they in a very real sense belong. The corporate purpose simply codifies that reality and articulates a shared commitment to make a positive contribution to society. It is a clear recognition that ‘value creation’ in human terms inevitably has both an economic and moral dimension.

The real challenge for those lawyers revisiting the notion of fiduciary duty is to create a safe environment in which the ultimate owners of companies may pursue their financial self-interest by making investments in corporations with a clear and legitimate purpose. The challenge for corporations is to be genuinely accountable to them alone, and not to try and be all things to all men.

What exactly is Responsible Investment?

All responsible now

Encouraged by the United Nations Environmental Program, principles of ‘responsible investment’ are being adopted by big investors all over the world. The UNPRI has been by far the greatest catalyst for bringing environmentally and socially conscious investment to a vastly expanded audience since its inception in 2006. This is surely a good thing. But it has not however yet resolved the inherent contradictions and conflicts that still lie at the heart of the concept.

Sir John Templeton, the famous investor and philanthropist, once said “competitive business has reduced costs, has increased variety, and has improved quality”. And if a business is not ethical, he added, “it will fail, perhaps not right away, but eventually.” He was expressing the familiar hypothesis that, for a truly sustainable business, financial, social and environmental imperatives converge in the long-run.

To whom, for what?

To plead for more ‘responsibility’ is to beg the obvious questions: to whom and for what? Institutional investors have a fiduciary duty to their beneficiaries which is widely accepted to be compatible with wider societal goals. Moreover, the prospects for sustainable flourishing of human society and the natural world can be significantly enhanced if capital is efficiently allocated in this noble pursuit.  Responsible investors who take ‘ESG’ – environmental, social and governance considerations – into account in their decisions will, in so doing, drive capital towards more sustainable business models. That has led many to extend the legal argument: to say that considerations of ESG in investment decision-making are in fact constitutive of investor’s fiduciary duty.

However enlightened this may be, it is still an argument from self-interest. What’s more, it is narrowly drawn in the sense that a responsible investor’s primary duty remains to the asset-owning beneficiary or trustees responsible for safeguarding their interests. As things currently stand, this interest is expressed as a promise of future financial reward: for example, a retirement income. For an individual investor, any wider obligation to society (or to the natural environment) is secondary. They remain fully accountable to the beneficiaries to whose interests they serve. To the extent that wider goals are nonetheless met by ‘sustainable capitalism’, they do so only indirectly through a more efficient allocation of self-interested capital.

Companies that successfully manage the social and environmental aspects of their business well – both the risks and opportunities – may well profitably endure in the long-run. They will be ‘winners’. The responsible investor’s wider social role is served by continuing to pick winners (and avoid losers) on behalf of its beneficiaries.  In this regard, they remain responsible to their beneficiaries for their past performance and assume an obligation to do so in the future. There is nothing really new here.

Conflict resolution

The problem with the ‘convergence hypothesis’ of sustainable business is: (i) the long-run is a series of short-terms, and (ii) in the short term, companies which manage their social and environmental aspects well are not necessarily winners in financial terms. We are therefore compelled to ask: why should a self-interested investor encourage the companies in which it invests to ‘internalise’ the negative social and environmental side-effects of supplying the goods and services that society apparently wants? There appears to be an inevitable conflict between the interests of responsible investors and wider society, at least in the short run, if those responsibilities are defined by fiduciary duty. Picking companies who are prepared to voluntarily shoulder a burden which might otherwise be imposed on society is not always compatible with the financial promises investors have made to their beneficiaries.

The investment industry is working hard to resolve this conflict. But it cannot be easily achieved without radically re-drawing the lines of responsibility or accountability. The oftentimes vague allusion to an investor’s ‘responsibility’ begs more questions than it answers. I would suggest we would do  better focus on the latter and if investors do indeed perform a service to society, they do so rather in their role as ‘stewards’.

Under the new doctrine of responsible investment the set of criteria that qualifies the investment as a ‘winner’ has indeed been expanded.  This in turn is gradually re-defining the content of the accountability relationship that exists between investee and investor. These relations are more properly expressed by the term ‘stewardship’. Thus, ‘responsible’ investors are increasingly encouraged in codes of best practice to hold corporations to account for all aspects of its past performance, both financial and ‘ESG’. But this does not entail any new obligation beyond that defined by its fiduciary duty which remains the same. 

Using a different lens

 

The argument so far can be summarised thus:

1. An investor’s primary obligation is defined by fiduciary duty
2. Considerations of ESG are constitutive of fiduciary duty if it serves the interests of beneficiaries.
3. That these also serve the wider interests of society does not establish a separate obligation.
4. Fiduciary duty is elaborated in contractual arrangements across the entire investment chain.
5. These arrangements establish the content of accountability relationships.
6. A ‘stewardship’ relationship entails accountability towards wider interests.

Sustainable capitalism requires that the ethical principles of stewardship are first clarified and then codified in new institutional arrangements across the chain from investee to beneficiary. These must ask whether those that we have entrusted have acted as good stewards. This doesn't mean we must abandon the notion of fiduciary duty. Rather, it extends it. Indeed, we need not expect investors to shrink from the financial promises they make to beneficiaries.  But a stewardship approach to investment relationships may establish investor’s wider obligations to society on somewhat firmer ground.

The challenge then lies in defining the true meaning of 'stewardship' in its moral and ethical sense, and what it means in practice. Viewing the investment landscape through a stewardship lens may urge a thorough-going re-examination of the moral values, purpose, goals and targets of corporations and investors alike. Finding new measures of success in meeting these goals is therefore an urgent task. Broader measures of performance or impact and a greater commitment to transparency will be required. These may widen our concept of investment 'value' from the flow of financial rewards to capital providers to the wider flow of benefits to society at large. They will not guarantee that narrow financial considerations will not dominate decision-making in the short-term.  But they can only add genuine rigour to the greater task of finding sources of sustainable financial returns in the long-run. To this end, the advance of stewardship values through an effective system of mutual accountability and trust must lie at the heart of a new vision of sustainable capitalism.

Corporate responsibility: a broken moral compass?

The business and finance world is facing up to its responsibilities. The term "Corporate Social Responsibility" (CSR) has by now become firmly established in the business lexicon and features in the MBA syllabus of most business schools. Large US and European companies have, in the main, adopted some kind of commitment to CSR, even if they prefer a different nuance - sustainability or corporate citizenship - and they publish lengthy reports just to prove it.

It would appear then, that the question of whether one can in fact talk meaningfully of collective responsibility has been answered and the argument that corporations are moral agents has been won. Naysayers still exist but they are in a shrinking minority and their arguments have not moved far from those of Levitt (1958) and Friedman (1962) who regarded a company's sole responsibility to be to its stockholders. Bakan (2004) has argued that a corporation's legal status prevents it from acting in anything other than its own self-interest and not for moral reasons. In reply, others (Crane & Matten 2004) argue that corporations have moral agency independent of their members, pointing to their internal decision structures as well as the beliefs and values embedded in organisational culture.

Responsibility: legal obligation or social duty?

If we accept that a company is a rational moral agent, how do we define its moral obligation in relation to other agents with moral standing? And for that matter, to whom or what do we extend moral standing (what about non-humans or the non-biotic environment, for example.)?

What does "responsibility" actually mean and to whom does it extend? With what ethical theory or framework can can make sense of it? Since "duty" is a close synonym, there is something distinctly Kantian about the principle of responsibility in terms of moral philosophy. Many CSR advocates would probably be quite comfortable with a deontological approach which judges acts as inherently good or bad regardless of their consequences derived perhaps from a utilitarian calculus. But we still need to ask: to whom does a business have a responsibility? Easy, the CSR advocate may claim, "to society".

Leaving aside the huge question of what we mean by "society" (a topic for a later post, perhaps), the cynic may reply that society does so by setting the "rules of the game" through the laws and legal frameworks that govern and constrain corporate actions, restrict the autonomy of its management, establish accountability (to its owners), and thereby define the responsibilities it expects of corporations.

As such, collective bodies such as corporations can be held legally responsible for their past actions, albeit subject to tricky issues such as intention, causation, limits of control, burden of  proof, negligence and when to impose strict liability. Moreover, laws codify the moral framework within which society detemines that companies should operate. In which case the quest for more responsible businesses should focus on public policy; fans of CSR should perform a monitoring role from the outside looking in, as quasi-regulators and whistleblowers who form part of civil society.

Beyond compliance....and into a moral muddle

This is not good enough for most CSR advocates. The scope of a company's responsibility is not adequately defined with reference to the law and extends beyond mere compliance with it. A company's legal responsibilities are most pertinent after-the-fact, in apportioning blame and seeking restitution. But CSR has come to mean some form of prospective responsibility: the behaviour and conduct of corporations in relation to wider society.

These obligations are typically expressed, for example, in stakeholder approaches, the concept of extended producer responsibility, or in some version of legitimation theory expressed in terms of an implicit contract or a social licence to operate. These now well enshrined management principles seem to be firmly rooted in deontological ethics. Is duty the ethical principle is at work in assigning corporate responsibility beyond legal compliance?

A Kantian approach might regard corporate responsibility towards a society viewed as a “kingdom of ends” in which its moral imperative lies in a universal respect for human dignity. But perhaps an emphasis on rationality and universal morality would attract other objections since moral agency in a pure Kantian approach means that corporations must exercise their own moral judgements in relation to its actions, rather than simply obeying universal rules (including those codified in laws, presumably). This would fly somewhat in the face of any desire to promote common or harmonised standards of behaviour of the form we typically see in codes of practice beloved by CSR advocates and practitioners.

For some the alternative is to appeal to enlightened self-interest or, in its more sophisticated form, shared value. In this formulation it is rational for a company to act responsibly towards "society" because, in so doing, it ultimately benefits itself (or more precisely, its stockholders). In its cruder form this rationale for CSR is therefore just a form of ethical egosim masquerading as duty. The company doesn't really have a moral duty to society at all. Friedman wins afterall.

Escaping responsibility

The theoretical ethical foundations for corporate responsibility are murkier than we might suppose. It feels right that companies should have obligations – or duties – to wider society but it is not entirely clear why - or what exactly they are. Instead, in the absence of a commonly accepted moral framework, the social norms of corporate behaviour emerge from a bustling bazaar of competing expectations birthed by the postmodernist ethical gut-feel.

The corporate commitment to the vague concept of sustainability offers little as a surrogate, hinting at a common ethical dimension to corporate goals (inter-generational justice) but leaving its application open to a wide range of interpretations. In the end, the trade-offs at the triple bottom line come down to a choice, subject to the preferences of management, over the relative weight (significance) and (possibly incommensurable) values they attach to the externalities (social or environmental impacts) associated with business activity. Whatever the ethical basis is for decision-making in a "sustainable business", it appears to be broadly consequentialist in nature. In the end the search for consensus results in loose agreement to codes of practice, guidelines and reporting frameworks detached from any firm ethical mooring.

The difficulties become even more apparent in the financial world. Here responsible investors are cast as moral agents with a fiduciary duty to a collective of principals. What exactly does responsibility mean in this context? Is it to act (i.e. invest) only in a manner which is in some sense morally right in relation to wider society, or to act in a certain way in relation to other agents (i.e. invest) only if those agents are themselves acting morally (i.e. “responsibly”) in relation to other objects of moral concern (“society” or “the environment”).

It turns out then that regarding corporate responsibility as an ethical duty may not be helpful after all. In the absence of firmly established ethical foundations and an appeal to a vaguer moral impulse, we we must perhaps accept as inevitable a relativism in business ethics, and welcome a healthy debate instead. In which case, there is no one-size-fits all standard of corporate behaviour and no universally accepted truth of corporate social responsibility.

Perhaps its time to look elsewhere for a guiding moral framework for corporate conduct. Those that use alternative terms like “corporate citizenship” may have consciously done so. Would it be better to appeal to a neo-Aristotelian ideal of morally virtuous character and a commitment to community expressed in a shared conception of the human good. Should we talk of Corporate Virtuosity, instead? Or what might feminist ethics have to say about the obligations of corporations to others in society with its focus on empathy, care and harmony in social relationships? Or further, perhaps the Judeo-Christian concept of “love” in one of its forms might do a better job of defining in more precise terms the nature of the obligation corporations have to others.

There is a clear and well established case for the economic and legal responsibilities society requires of corporations. The ethical responsibilities it expects from them are not so clear cut. We can't rely on the ethics of duty to establish universal norms of good behaviour. For the good of corporate social responsibility, perhaps its time to abandon it altogether and find a new moral compass?