jimrpa, yes, the goal is to maximize shareholder value. Shareholder value is maximized when profits are maximized. If I own DL stock, I prefer $1B of profit on $2B of sales vs. $50M profit on $10B of sales. If I own DL stock, I don't care about revenue, pax miles flown, or pax segments flown as ends themselves. I only care about them insofar as they drive profit. To date, miles and segments were used as proxies for profit. In truth, revenue is a much better proxy for profit (much higher correlation than miles - though I only speak from intuition). So DL is going to a hybrid of miles and revenue, which is going to more closely approximate customer profitability.

But again, turning to your original point. You are splitting hairs if you want to say that maximizing shareholder value is much, if at all, different from maximizing profit. And I am confident your B-School profs would concur. (Disclaimer: I have not been through business school, but have a decent business education, I think.) With your examples of B&J and Body Shop, I would argue that the companies are not as altruistic as you might believe. B&J does their "2% for charity" or what have you. Call me a cynic, but I think they know that the twofold benefit of this outweighs the cost. The two benefits are:

-Public relations which drive sales
-Decreased pre-tax profit which decreases tax

So I would in fact argue that these charitable actions increase shareholder value because they (perhaps counterintuitively) maximize profits.