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Carl Icahn's position, of course, matters if Icahn is a major shareholder of the firm in question; less so otherwise.

My guess is that maximizing ROI is also popular among investors not named Carl Icahn. I don't think I've ever worked for a company where the investors said "we want you to make money, and also accomplish socially relevant goal XXXX" where decided to sacrifice any part of "making money" for the sake of XXXX.

I've worked with plenty of investors who had goals which went beyond purely making money. There's even a legal movement to formally tie corporations to non-profit motivations (see benefit corporations).

Thinking about non-profit vs for-profit as a strict dichotomy is unhelpful. There are plenty of investors who shy away from particular for-profit investments and prefer other ones for entirely non-financial reasons.

Sounds like a good idea, provided it's more a more specific and verifiable commitment than Google's vacuous "don't be evil".

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