ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses on three perspectives on business-government societal relations in United States (US) that capture some of the most important differences. It explains the three perspectives with three models of business and society namely the shareholder model, strategic model and stakeholder model with examples that highlight specific perspectives. The shareholder model tends to look at business in isolation and to emphasize economic analysis and profit-making for individuals, proprietors, and in the case of larger companies, shareholders. The strategic business model tends to look at what it takes to have a successful company. The stakeholder perspective sees itself as subordinate to society. These ideal models are often degraded to varying degrees, and when this is so, the type of model reported to be important by the regime may be less important than the level and types of business influence functioning at the expense of the public good. This general problem is identified as crony capitalism.
