Corporate leadership must extend beyond maximizing shareholder profits and focus instead on serving the broader communities that allow businesses to exist, Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen said.

Speaking at the Institute of Corporate Directors’ Forum in Makati City, Leonen challenged executives and board members to reconsider how they define integrity in corporate decision-making.

“Integrity has been made far too small by society, reduced to not stealing, not lying, or merely complying with rules,” Leonen said.

“It becomes the courage to widen the frame. It is the courage to insist on looking at the poverty, the inequality, the disempowerment that the comfortable picture so conveniently crops away,” he added.

Using photography as a metaphor, Leonen noted that every photo frame represents a deliberate choice about what to include and what to leave out.

He observed that most ethical failures in business stem not from outright dishonesty, but from “small, respectable refusals” to act after seeing uncomfortable realities.

Leonen warned against equating a company’s best interest solely with short-term shareholder enrichment, reminding business leaders that corporations ultimately exist because of the public.

“To read it that way is to forget who the true beneficiary is,” Leonen said. “It is the community whose law bequeathed to the corporation its being. It’s the community whose life the corporation was always, and in the end, always meant to serve.”

Addressing the role of independent directors, Leonen said board members must use their positions to voice uncomfortable truths and evaluate value beyond balance sheets.

He warned of the dangers of measuring success strictly by financial worth rather than societal impact.