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Steve Denning Argument

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Over the years, firms have increasingly been maximising shareholder value. However, Steve Denning, a former director of the World Bank, author of six leadership and management books and columnist for Forbes, disagrees. His article “The Origin of the ‘World’s Dumbest Idea’: Milton Friedman”, was published on June 26, 2013 on Forbes, debates against Friedman’s argument that the social responsibility of corporations is to make money for its shareholders. The main issue here is whether the maximisation of shareholder value as the guiding principle of executives is detrimental to the corporation. Although Denning has exhibited valid points in his argument, his lack of citation, biased view on most arguments and his tone has dampened the credibility …show more content…

He attacks Friedman selective choice of legal realities that help prove his stance and discarding of those that do otherwise as mere “legal fictions”. In that, Denning disputes that Friedman rests his arguments on legal realities such as the law of agency, and dismisses another legal reality – the corporation – for the sake of illustrating how the corporation’s money belongs to its stockholders, customers, and employees but not the real legal owner – the organisation itself. Instead of providing a balanced argument on the legal definitions of terms “corporations” and “agency”, Denning’s stance is mainly concerned with how Friedman conveniently chooses legal facts that only provide backing to his conclusions, instead of tackling these core terms to help support his own argument. Subsequently, Denning may have misinterpreted Friedman’s main argument. The actual title of Friedman's article is "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits". Denning hastily substituted the word "sole" for "social" and misinterpreted Friedman’s argument to be that that the sole purpose of the firm is to make money for shareholders. This is not true. The main issue Friedman was tackling was the social responsibility of business; the responsibility that it has to the society. In fact, the word “sole” was not mentioned even once in the

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