Graduates of Oxford University fly high. And graduates of the university’s Saïd Business School are at the top of the tree when it comes to jobs in City of London investment banks, hedge funds and management consultancies.

So when a Saïd Business School professor says the finance sector has grown too powerful, it is worth asking some hard questions — for example: “Your graduates were at the forefront of developing the financial instruments which wrecked our economy, so surely your business school must bear some of the blame?”

Colin Mayer takes the question on the chin. His new book, Firm Commitment, looks at “why the corporation is failing us and how to restore trust in it,” so he is painfully aware of public perceptions about where the blame lies.

He said: “At the moment, the perspective of business schools is from the point of view of shareholders — that corporations are there to maximise their value for shareholders. But that is too narrow a view and we have to think of the implications of that for the way the corporation is run.

“I feel these things should be the centrepiece of business education but business schools around the world have been producing graduates who have gone into corporations and consultancies with a particular view of wealth creation.

“I do not have such strong views about which sectors people should be going into as about their behaviour. They should be going in with strongly held principles about the values these corporations should be upholding.”

During his five years as dean of the Saïd Business School, it set up a pioneering centre for social entrepreneurship and focused on the role of business in society.

"That has been a strong strand, but it takes more than one institution to change the way in which people perceive the nature of the corporation. I have written this book as an attempt to highlight the topic," he said.

Professor Mayer, 59, joined the business school in 1996, when it was based in a tiny building in St Giles and oversaw the creation of the keynote building next to Oxford’s railway station.

He stood down from the top role two years ago to concentrate on academic research — and to write the book, originally commissioned by Oxford University Press in 2005.

Now Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies, he teaches the principles of financial regulation to law and finance students, putting his views to the next generation of business and finance executives.

He is also on a committee reporting to Chancellor George Osborne on how the UK’s “natural capital” is being used.

The Natural Capital Committee, chaired by Oxford economist Dieter Helm, aims to create a 'green accountancy,' putting a value on everything from the view from White Horse Hill to the bees that pollinate our plants.

He is optimistic the financial crisis will force reform, despite his experience of the “immense control” exerted by the UK’s financial sector over economic policy and of the self-interest that blocks change.

“There is serious concern about the way corporations are behaving. There is a realisation that there is a serious problem of short-termism in the UK,” he said.

He recently visited Japan, mired in two decades of recession, and urged them not to look to the UK’s “extreme form of shareholder capitalism” as a way out of economic difficulties.

In his book, he puts forward examples of several companies with structures he hopes could pave the way towards a better future.

They include the Indian group Tata — controlled by a foundation based, he says, on strong moral values — Carlsberg, Bertelsmann, Robert Bosch and IKEA. “What is interesting about all of those corporations is that they have long-term owners such as the Bertelsmann foundation, which set the principles by which the businesses are run. They do not get involved in the day-to-day running of the corporations, but they do set the values to which they adhere."

He concedes that IKEA, accused of using ‘slave labour’ in Communist era Eastern Europe, and Siemens, with a similar record in Nazi Germany, have questionable episodes in their past.

He said: "It does not imply that those corporations are perfect, but where such a corporation diverts from its principles, it suffers the consequences. UK corporations were conceived as 'moral entities' by their founders, such as the Quaker families who set up Cadbury's, Bourneville and Colman's and the Jewish founder of Lehman Brothers.

"They all had very strong principles. How did they become organisations that are pure shareholder-value-maximising entities? Going back to what corporations were intended to do is a major priority for the 21st century."

He can see a new attitude in his students — partly, he admits, because there are fewer highly-paid finance jobs on offer — and says they are interested in exploring the idea that there is more to life than the bottom line.

He added: “I would not like it thought that this book is anti-shareholder. We need a very balanced view. The corporation has been hijacked by short-term shareholders and we need to re-establish the balance with others, such as us as employees and members of communities.” * Firm Commitment, published by OUP, is on sale now at £16.99