Those managing the money are not guided solely by profit maximisation: there's an investment philosophy saying no money will be put into tobacco or Sudan.
What counts more each side of the border is the maximisation of sales.
But there are many other less obvious examples of such externalities, such as the anxiety caused to workers' lives by unregulated labour markets, or the general undermining of values and common decency produced by the single-minded concentration on profit maximisation.
It values profit maximisation over social welfare, individuals over communities.
While Branson and Zeitz say there are many issues that need addressing, ranging from the need for greater transparency to redefining business education, the B Team begins with three challenges in a bid to turn business away from its fixation with short-term profit maximisation.
That is, it assumes that profit maximisation is a goal because people want more claims on real resources because they want to consume more real resources.
Mr Wasserman notes that Dell's boss has been one of those rare cases of a founder who has been "rich and regal", combining value maximisation with tight control.
The maximisation of genetic diversity is fast becoming the priority for conservation, with no regard to the preferences of society.
Not long after their article was published, several companies that proudly practised shareholder-value maximisation went up in flames: Enron, Arthur Andersen and WorldCom, among others.
And if they do not buck up their ideas, argues Paul Ormerod, a British economist, there could be worse to come as information technology and globalisation entwines humanity together ever more thoroughly.To understand many of the decisions that people make, the "rational utility maximisation" of homo economicus must be abandoned, argues Mr Ormerod.
After all, Mr Welch is credited with launching the shareholder-value maximisation movement with a speech in 1981 on "Growing Fast in a Slow-Growth Economy".
