2022 COMMENTS & CONTRIBUTIONS | “I do not think that there is any evidence that man ever existed as a non-social animal.”

Thus wrote Charles Darwin in an 1871 letter.¹That same year saw the publication of William Stanley Jevon’s Theory of Political Economy, one of the first books to present economics as a mathematical science and to emphasize the maximization of ‘utility.’²“The theory which follows is entirely based on a calculus of pleasure and pain,” Jevons wrote, “and the object of Economics is to maximise happiness by purchasing pleasure, as it were, at the lowest cost of pain.” Of the two, it was Jevon’s ideas that took hold in management science. Today, however, Darwin is in the ascendent.

“The cultural, political and environmental context of business matters more than ever,” writes Gillian Tett, Chair of the Editorial Board at the Financial Times, in her Preamble to this year’s report. In the late 20th century, as economist Milton Friedman’s shareholder-first view of capitalism took hold, business information was scarce, of questionable veracity, and available only after considerable time-lag. Today, “radical transparency is changing the social contract between companies and society,” Tett observes. As “sustainability” and “stakeholderism” have taken center stage, businesses are under pressure to demonstrate that they act “responsibly.”