ABSTRACT
The high levels of growth experienced in the postwar generation produced a burgeoning middle class that not only expected more from corporations, but this segment of the labor force could also help to defray the costs of greater government regulations through the higher taxes they paid. High growth yielded the higher profits that helped to underwrite the costs of both union contracts that featured greater pay and benefits and the two forms of corporate social responsibility, welfare capitalism and corporate philanthropy. Up through the 1950s, the main orientation of corporate owners and managers toward their economic environments was one of control, especially through governance structures that served to restrain competition. By 1980, American politics was at an ideological crossroads. The campaign for greater corporate social responsibility of the previous decade was nearly spent. Decades in the making, America's regulatory structure for large corporations experienced an unexpected and rapid collapse in the 1980s and into the 1990s.
