Corporate Social Responsibility

What is CSR?

Can a company have social responsibilities?

FRIEDMAN’s ARGUMENT AGAINST CSR

According to Milton Friedman’s article of 1970, titled ‘ The social responsibility of a business is to increase its profit’ .he argued 3 things

• Only human beings have a moral responsibilities for their actions.

He claimed that only human beings can be morally responsible for their actions, corporations are not human therefore cannot be morally responsible for its actions.

Since corporations are set up by human being, it is them who can assume responsibilities for the actions of the corporation.

• It is the manager’s responsibility to act solely in the interest of the shareholders.

His 2nd argument was that the only responsibility of the managers of corporation is act in the interest of the business owners who employed them. Here the interest of the business owner should be profit making. If the manager acts for any other purpose, he is betraying his employer.

• Social issues and problems are the proper province of the government and not the corporation.

His third argument is that managers should not and cannot decide what’s in the society’s best interest as this is the job of government.

The frame work for CSR was developed by Archie carrol in 1999, during this time many concept have erupted, this were based on 2 points.

• Why might it be argued that corporation has social responsibility

• What is the nature of these social responsibilities.

The first question appears to be a very controversial one, it is widely accepted now that business do have responsibilities beyong making profit. This is view on a number of arguments.the corporation takes on social responsibility and in doing so promotes its own self interest. Corporation percieved to be socially responsible might be rewarded with extra and more satisfied customers while perceived irresponsibility may result in boycott.

Example is ExxonMobil who experienced...