The definition that matters is not the OED, but the laws that govern companies.

There’s no real law to maximize profits. Just greed and a court precedent, which has way more nuance than people realize.

No body of legislation ever said that companies needed to maximize profits.

> There’s no real law to maximize profits. Just greed and a court precedent,

I thought that in Common Law countries, court precedents are "real law".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law

> In law, common law (also known as judicial precedent, judge-made law, or case law) is the body of law created by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue of being stated in written opinions.

(emphasis mine)

Y'all are arguing about a specific class of corporation while using the word "company". A company could be one guy with an LLC, and that one guy is obligated by no law or person to earn a profit as long as he can sustain the costs of the business. A great example of a company that appears to be operating at a loss for a very long time because of the beliefs of the founder/owner is Canonical.

If he cannot sustain the costs of the business then I guess you can argue that there's a law of nature in play saying that the proprietor has to earn some amount of profit just to exist, but if you're shaking your fist at Nature demanding that we produce the value that we intend to consume, well, good luck. You may as well be upset about the existence of gravity, or that food must be grown or hunted in order to be eaten.

No law requires companies to have shareholders, unless they're corporations. And even then, a corporation can have a single shareholder.

B-corp's are companies that don't just exist to serve shareholders.

You had a valid point that most companies are structured in that way, but not all.