The hopes and limits of "conscious capitalism"

Law professor Joan MacLeod Heminway critiques Conscious capitalism: liberating the heroic spirit of business by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia.

Professor Heminway remarks, "There has been a longstanding debate in business and legal circles about whether corporations exist solely or primarily to maximize shareholder wealth or whether the corporate form serves—or even is permitted to serve—a larger purpose. Conscious capitalism engages this debate and encourages a more broadly inclusive definition of the corporation—of capitalist business enterprises as a whole—that involves deliberate business choices made to serve a more wide-ranging set of objectives."

Joan MacLeod Heminway is the W.P. Toms Distinguished Professor of Law at The University of Tennessee College of Law; a fellow of the Center for Business and Economic Research, the Center for the Study of Social Justice, and the Center for Corporate Governance; and serves on the Executive Committee of the Business Law Section of the Tennessee Bar Association. (Recorded May 21, 2014)