Do businesses have a social responsibility?

[manicmonoliths]

Milton Friedman once wrote an article claiming that businesses have no other role other than to maximise profits and that they have no social responsibility to protect the envirnoment or employ people from diverse backgrounds.

Do you think this is still true? Should businesses just mindlessly pursue profits with no regard for the consequences of their actions?

Can we depend on governments to regulate businesses in line with the social interest when so many government officials are also shareholders in large multi-national corporations?

[Robert W]

political correctness helps neuters every one.
yrs past we could act with out 'social concessions' however now it is expensive to do so. so we don't.
the more government inbred into your 'life' the more life I have.

read history .

[muncie birder]

I think it might be worse than Milton even advocated. Many CEOs try to maximize their profits just so they can maximize their bonuses. They use every trick they can dream up, including capitalizing items that should be expensed, creating CDOs they can market at a hefty profit and oh yes and selling insurance on worthless bonds that they can not afford to pay claim on.

Frankly it is disgusting.

Good old boy Angelo Molizo of Country Wide maximized his bonus to the tune of 69 million in 2006. He also managed to drive the company into bankrupcy--well almost. BAC is going to bail him out.

[Swaminathan P]

the question has many answers.

let us agree business is for profit - how to quantity profit - is it short term or long term.

business success comes out of discipline -- Develop behavior by instruction and practice; especially to teach self-control.

in the absence of success there is no profit in business - they will see Waterloo.

Business without social interest if a disaster to themselves than to others.

there are lot of successful gone burst when they broke discipline - there are lot of case studies - in recent days Enron and many more even in recent history.

Government regulations to be treat as complementary - business should have self-charted social responsibility

[Yarx]

Milton Friedman was correct.
Why would anyone start a business other than to make money.
Where the 'social responsibility' comes in is with the customers. If the majority of customers, say, didn't want to buy battery chicken, then supermarkets would soon stop stocking it. The market would have spoken. If consumers continue to buy it then economic reality wins the argument.
It's not for the government or anyone else to tell consumers what to buy, but their free decisions will impose 'social responsibility' if that's what they want as the business will have to make 'ethical' choices to survive.

[Mike M]

Directly... no - the goal is to make money - as much as possible for as little as possible.

Indirectly.. yes, businesses do need to be socially responsible.

If a company is seen as not socially responsible, then people will stop buying their products or services - os if the business wants to stay viable they do need to be sensitive to changes in the market and customers expectations.
Corporate social responsibility can help any business become more competitive.

[debmil31]

No, its all about the dough

[ebonybailey2007]

they can choose to, but lets be clear on this, social responsibility in the business world is a buzz work, much like the climate change issue, they are all jumping on it saying how great their business is, its all PR stunts.

I assure you not one fo the top 1,000000 companies, thats right One Million companies can honestly say they have not contribted to global warming.