" A unified strategy begins at the fundamental education level, students who will become the future corporate leaders and operators must be taught at an early age to have strong business ethics and values. The lack of such education is an essential cause for why corporate abuse is rampant in the world today. In 1980, a survey conducted USA Today asked Harvard Business School graduates what their top career priority was, an overwhelming 85% answered to "make money." This statistic is emblematic of the corporate culture for the past two decades. Changes within the education system to reinforce the importance of values at the collegiate and graduate level will have a profound impact on corporate leaders of the future. Evidence of this can be seen in another recent USA Today survey. When the same survey was presented to Harvard graduates in 2004, only 42% answered that money was their number one priority, while 28% said "having a positive impact on the world" as their primary goal. The current education system has begun to emphasize the importance of social awareness and public service as a strong element of corporate responsibility. As a result, students and future business leaders are becoming much more aware of business ethics and the responsibilities that they have towards the American public and consumers around the world. Creating an infrastructure of corporate responsibility at an early learning stage is not easily accomplished. While most of the burden is upon the American education system to create a culture and curriculum that re-enforces this point, other institutions must work in cooperation as well. At the educational level, the federal government needs to increase their funding for education in corporate governance. This can be accomplished through the provision of grants and loans for public service and community oriented business students, or through community projects and research targeted on increasing corporate responsibility. At the local and municipal level, governments need to proactively recruit students...

More opportunities towards community service and government participation will increase the awareness of future corporate leaders to societal problems, and re-enforce a strong desire to initiate social change at a basic level. At the same time, social institutions and NGOs need to also recognize education as the only method to a long-term transition from corporate abuse towards corporate responsiveness.
In the final analysis, neither government, nor social movements can change the long-term culture of corporations by themselves. It requires a fundamental shift in how to frame the problem. Instead of focusing on how to limit corporations and restrict them through regulation and threats, we need to re-orient to an approach that embraces corporations as a way of life in the modern world. The goal is to work within the corporations by affecting the leaders of tomorrow, to think not of them but to understand their responsibilities before they even enter the workforce. The only way to hold a corporation responsible is to impact and change the mentalities of each and every individual working within the corporate domain. This lofty goal cannot be done in a day or a week, but it takes a strong educational foundation starting today.

Pound, John the Promise of the Governed Corporation, Harvard Business Review, March-April, 1995, pp. 89-98.

Pozen, Robert C. Institutional Investors: The Reluctant Activists, Harvard Business Review, January-February 1994, pp. 140-149.

Roe, Mark J. A Political Theory of American Corporate Finance, Volume 91:10, Columbia Law Review, pp. 10-67

Shinn, James, Nitwits in Pinstripes vs. Barbarians at the Gate, September 2000

Thompson, Tracy a. And Gerald F. Davis. The Politics of Corporate Control and the Future of Shareholder Activism in the United States, Corporate Governance: An International…