As I understand it, corporations are not legally required to "grow, forever until the end of time", they are required to act in the interest of shareholders. Typically, that means returning value to shareholders of the company.
Growing the company is one way to achieve that. Other ways include paying out a share of the profit the company is making via a dividend or using share buybacks to reduce the number of outstanding shares.
There are plenty of examples of companies doing all of the above on various public exchanges. For example, utility companies often don't grow very much (if at all) but they do have consistent cash flow which they pay out as dividends.
> Don’t utilities grow as we generally consume more and more resources?
Yes, you are correct. Most utility companies do grow to some extent, just very slowly. You also have to compare the rate that they grow against other metrics like GDP. If a company is growing slower than GDP you could make an argument that they're actually shrinking.
> In the Caden of dividends, wouldn’t they also need to increase over time to act in the best interest of shareholders?
Yup. In theory, if a company does not grow sales at all then their dividend should be able to grow at the same rate as inflation. Most companies do grow sales to some extent and thus are able to grow their dividend more than inflation.
For example, Coca-Kola has grown their dividend on average 7.46% per year. AT&T on the other hand has only grown theirs 2.26% per year which is closer to inflation.
Growing the company is one way to achieve that. Other ways include paying out a share of the profit the company is making via a dividend or using share buybacks to reduce the number of outstanding shares.
There are plenty of examples of companies doing all of the above on various public exchanges. For example, utility companies often don't grow very much (if at all) but they do have consistent cash flow which they pay out as dividends.