Changing the Criteria for Corporate Decision Making

24 April 2026

Berry, NSW Australia

The solution to stopping corporate abuse of the public interest lies in changing the instructions directors are given by the corporate law regarding the criteria they must use to make their decisions.  https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7452204908763668480/.

If this sounds like a very big change, it’s because it is.  It has the potential to eliminate a wide range of corporate abuses. It’s a natural question to ask why such a bold move can succeed where much more limited attempts to legislate against abusive corporate behaviour have failed.

There are several answers to that question.   The first is that the new instructions will make only minimal change to the old.  It leaves the profit motive in place, but only requires that it be achieved without causing severe harm to the environment and other important elements of the public interest.  This isn’t too much to ask.  It’s possible to have both—a strong economy without severe harm being inflicted.

Our species has a shared understanding that, as individuals, we shouldn’t use our own freedom to harm others—especially severely.  Intuitively, this would indicate we shouldn’t set up corporations which at times can’t be stopped from doing exactly that. The change reflects this principle and should make it more difficult for companies now inflicting severe harm to obstruct its enactment.

The existing outdated instructions are no longer desirable for the betterment of our society.  Indeed, they are destroying it.  Changing the instructions will make it clear that corporations no longer have any inborn right to inflict severe harm on the environment or another element of the public interest.

Secondly, corporations should never be allowed to operate in a way that causes severe damage to the public interest. This is a clear principle that all but the few, those who have a vested interest in destroying it, such as the fossil fuel companies, can stand behind.

Corporations only exist because the corporate law passed by each of the world’s legislatures allow for their organization and operation.  In other words, their very existence is owed to the government which passed those laws, and the people for whose benefit they were passed.

A global campaign to change the law and issue these new instructions should attract the support of numerous organisations already separately fighting corporate abuse, one abuse one jurisdiction at a time. Acting together, their efforts should be much more effective (and can be much better funded) than they are now, acting separately.  These organizations include, tens of thousands of non-governmental organisations, socially responsible investors, proponents of ESG and socially responsible business, religious organizations, the United Nations and the COP process, and others. 

Uniting the opponents of corporate abuse in a global campaign, will also weaken the efforts of the companies currently inflicting severe harm. They will be forced to contest the issuance of the new instructions everywhere.  This contest will be fought over matters in which they have no particular expertise or advantage.  They will also have less leverage to threaten to move to places that promise to regulate them less. 

Thirdly, it should be possible for the new instructions to garner political support from all political parties.  Will any politician have the lack of sense to claim that the right of corporations to severely harm the public interest should be preserved?  Only the most out of touch.

Non-partisan support in turn should make it easier to streamline the legislative process and avoid the bureaucratic maze of legislative processes that corporations have become proficient at manipulating to delay and frustrate the enactment of new laws they don’t like. 

Fourthly, a political campaign to adopt the change will isolate those few companies which are currently causing severe harm (e.g., the fossil fuel companies and their largest customers) from the millions of businesses which are not.  Many of the latter will be valuable allies in the contest to get the change adopted.  Among other things, they will help keep the severe abusers from employing misinformation to obstruct the change.  This should aid in keeping opponents from being able to entice politicians into making the enactment of the new instructions a partisan issue.

There are sure to be other reasons that I haven’t thought of here.  We shouldn’t let the failures of the past to enact the legislation necessary to halt corporate abuse which causes severe damage drive us to despair and giving up.  There is at least one other way to stop this abuse. That’s changing the criteria by which boardroom decisions are made.  The sooner the better.

#santamartconference #justtransition #fossilfuels #renewables #preservingtheenvironment