Vittorio Coda's discussion of the goals and purpose of the business
enterprise illuminates the long-running debate over the goals of the
firm. His conceptualization of the firm and its relationships within
society transcends stale arguments over shareholders versus stakeholders
by viewing the firm less as an agent of individual interests and more as
an engine of social development that unifies the interests of the
different participants. In articulating a model of the entrepreneurial
firm embedded in a social system and a values system based upon notions
of fairness and social responsibility, Coda offers an original approach
to interpret the business system. The view of a socially-responsible,
entrepreneurial, business sector surfacing in this book offers an
attractive alternative to most of the prevailing models of market
capitalism that have attracted criticism over the past decades.