Should Prometheus Be Bound?

Philippe de Woot examines what companies owe society as the world grows more interconnected. Rather than cataloguing methods or everyday business practices, the book works at the level of ideas and explores the firm as a source of creativity and enterprise. It considers how advances in science and technology, expanding globalization, and the loosening of regulation are opening new possibilities for business while also raising new challenges.

The author turns to the emerging movement known as corporate social responsibility and treats it as a subject for conceptual and critical scrutiny. The book presents itself as the first work to analyse this trend in that way. Its central argument is that a corporation's legitimacy will increasingly depend on how much it contributes to the shift toward sustainable development.