For my money, Google Inc.’s famous pledge in its 2004 initial public offering registration filing that it would try to avoid doing “evil” set a benchmark for fuzzy, if arguably well-intentioned, statements of corporate ethics. Mssrs. Brin and Page were roundly ridiculed, at least in soulless financial circles, for their  promise “to make the world a better place”... in per-fect har-mo-ny. But that manifesto, as it was called, highlighted the difficulty of even beginning to define what it means for a corporation, especially one governed by those pesky fiduciary responsibilities, to act responsibly.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business recently took up the question in this fascinating piece. The upshot: There's little consensus on what responsible corporate behavior really is. The concept has morphed repeatedly over time as societal standards and expectations change, with globalization adding a new layer of complexity. And the fundamental, even Platonic, questions remain: Does a business owe something to society? Are companies responsible for the actions of their suppliers or other partners? Do corporate "stakeholders," that endangered species, have any rights, and how do those compare to that of the noble shareholder?  Is a "good" company understood only as the antithesis of the evil one?

No Google search will turn up answers to that. —Alain Sherter

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