Il modello di impresa all’origine della crisi e l’alternativa dell’impresa socialmente responsabile

This paper suggests that the model of firm based on the principle of “shareholder value maximization”, that has been dominant during the last thirty years of neo- libertarian hegemony in Anglo-Saxon capitalist countries, was one of the main determinants of the global financial crisis started in 2007/2008 and still not conceded. It also conjured in making so difficult and persistent the crisis of European sovereign debts. Second, the paper proposes – with some detailed argumentation – an alternative model of the firm, the “socially responsible corporation” wherein the governance structure in composed by trustees owing fiduciary duties to all the corporate stakeholders, which is traceable back to more than twenty years of public debates on corporate social responsibility and also to different models of capitalism that have continued to exit even if not based on the same dogma. They are on the contrary grounded on the idea that the firm objective function is to produce and fairly distributing a surplus of bell being to all the relevant, but multiple stakeholder. This paper elaborates theoretically on this model from a joint ethics & economics perspective elaborating on the idea of “social contract” and suggests institutional reforms of corporate governance providing for stakeholders participation rights.