One common criticism I've heard of benefit corporations is that a hostile takeover or series of leadership changes can result in a situation where the values/goals are just stripped out intentionally, rendering it a normal corporation. Alternately, strip the assets and rights to leave the benefit corporation a husk and transfer everything to a non-benefit corp. It definitely makes me wonder how robust a setup like a B corporation can actually be once unrestrained capitalism gets to act on it for 5-10 years.
Those are definitely realistic scenarios. But in the case of a company that relies heavily on attracting and maintaining talented employees, those actions would probably engender significant blowback as well. At the very least the abandoning of values is a discrete step that is taken, as opposed to an vague degradation of some executives feelings. I do agree that it isn’t a total solution, but I do think there are some other interesting developments in the area, like the Long Term Stock Exchange and Generation Investment Management.
