CHAPTER 3

The Ethics of Investor Relations

Investor relations (IR) is never ethically neutral. IR acts as a channel between two essential, productive and beneficial activities, and assists both of them: (1) the corporate task of creating customers, employment, and economic wealth and (2) the equity market task of helping the best companies grow and enabling a wide audience to benefit from corporate success.

The corporation is not simply a device for making profit for owners. Since the 16th century, corporations have played an essential part in the economic growth of European states. Corporations do not obtain moral purpose and a “social license” through acts of philanthropy. Corporations do not need to engage in charitable work because they have ...

Get Online Marketing to Investors now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.