Academic opinion now agrees with public opinion. In 2017 the British Academy launched ‘The Future of the Corporation’ as its flagship programme. Led by Colin Mayer, Professor of Finance at Oxford University and the former Dean of its business school, the programme’s central proposition is that the purpose of business is to meet its obligations to its customers and its workforce. Profitability is not the objective; it is a constraint that has to be satisfied in order to achieve these objectives on a sustainable basis.
