Capitalism at Risk

5

The Business Response

WHAT, THEN, should be done about the challenges facing market capitalism? And what, specifically, is the role of business in this effort? In our conversations, we heard answers reflecting a spectrum of views. Although executives in our forums did not use our terminology, their positions clustered into four broad categories that we term business as bystander, business as activist, business as innovator, and business as usual.

In this chapter, before offering our own view, we take a closer look at these four positions. Although we find none of them entirely satisfactory, each contains some important insights. A closer look will help us construct a fifth position—business as leader—and suggest an alternative understanding ...