For-profit companies care about profits for their shareholders, that's it. Heck, even non-profit often tend to value more profit than their integrity or cause but that's a topic for another day.
I wish this wasn't the case but even good-willed individuals at the helm of for-profits are forced to pursue profit and avoid anything clearly leading to losses, else they are sacked.
Integrity and a healthy market align with fiduciary duty as long as one can make the argument that it's in the long term interest of the company. It's really, really difficult to find examples of a person being held liable for not upholding their fiduciary duty because what can be argued as good for the long term success of the company involves a lot of prognostication.
Fiduciary duty is there to prevent things like a CEO choosing to oberpay his cousin's company that has no history in the market for things they've never done before when there is an obviously better option available.
Companies that act poorly, as you describe, do so out of their own desire, not because they are forced to by any sort of duty.
Examples of things which don't count:
- Supporting an open source competitor to avoid getting hammered by antitrust
- Giving money to a foundation (which they may or might not own) for greenwashing
- Giving money to a foundation ran by a friend/family member
- Doing an activity to try to fix an evil thing they did before and backfired
- Doing something good for obvious PR reason (e.g. By being heavily advertised) but then do something even worse in the same area later on
I'm genuinely interested in a healthy conversation about this. But I honestly cannot think of anything which either is generally free for the company or that will help them getting (or not losing) more money. Happy to be wrong.
You are arguing from a prejudiced position.
What evidence would be required for you to believe that a donation to an environmental cause wasn't greenwashing?
Your list of exceptions seems fairly obviously aimed at making the task impossible because it's all based on interpretation of motives. You're essentially discounting all actions that have positive societal effects as long as doing so is motivated by money which is counter to the point I was making.
Giving money away to charity, by the meme interpretation of fiduciary duty, would be illegal. Instead, companies do it all the time because it makes them look better which might improve their business outlook in the future. That satisfies fiduciary dury despite it being a red line in the accounting books.
Wouldn't you like to live in a world where people care enough about doing good things that they'd prefer to patronize companies that do good things? That seems like an incredibly positive effect, regardless of the business' motives.
Now, it's in Cali, where it's not as strong a statement as in some other states, but it's still got a lot of precedent behind it.