By achieving corporate accountability to stakeholders, many of these costs would be eliminated to the benefit of victims and the national economy. A plan of action is presented to begin the process of creating more effective and more humane corporations, by restoring the original public purpose of the corporate system. A critical step will be to achieve corporate accountability through full and fair disclosure to stakeholders, following the model adopted sixty years ago to bring a degree of order and fairness to financial markets. The full light of accountability will change management's behavior and substantially reduce corporate abuse and misbehavior. While such voluntary and grassroots-based action is emphasized, a draft of a federal Corporate Accountability Act is also presented in case national legislation becomes necessary.
Appendices review in detail the Information needed by stakeholder groups.
The book concludes that corporate accountability will not cure all the ills of the corporate system, but it will allow honorable managers to make honorable choices - choices that balance the interests of all stakeholders. Such balancing choices are now extremely difficult, when the corporation's objective is taken to be the maximization of the bottom line at whatever cost to stakeholders. What Others Are Saying About Tyranny of the Bottom Line and Its Author Tyranny of the Bottom Line will quickly become a classic. It is profound, yet easily accessible. This is the most important book written on American corporations and their power since Berle and Means.