The organization of the balance of this paper is as follows. Section 2 will comment on some aspects of the normative debate over whether corporations should be permitted to give away shareholder value in the pursuit of some social goal. Section 3 will consider management's discretion to pursue non shareholder interests in the formulation of business and operating policy, both in the name of profit under the business judgment rule and under express statutory and judicial authorization. The section will also consider the limited extent to which management is actually required to subordinate shareholder gain to other objectives. Section 4 will then review the specific setting in which managerial discretion to devote shareholder resources to competing goals has received the most attention by the legislatures and the courts: charitable and philanthropic donations.
