What Are Companies Responsible For Whom Should Executives Serve

This document compares the main existing models on a company's social responsibility, in their descriptive, instrumental and normative aspects, with the intention of giving a rigorous theoretical foundation to an eminently practical problem: whom do executives serve and what should their priority be? To do this, it briefly reviews the shareholder model, models of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and, specifically, the stakeholder model. Finally, it introduces the idea of a company as a community of people who work together under the philosophy of the common good, which is the business vision that inspired the foundation of IESE.