Social Responsibilities of Business an Article by Friedman

peer-reviewed journal articles and one online periodical. First, the paper provides a brief introduction of the four articles. Second, the paper compares and contrasts the four articles. Finally, the author presents his views on the topic of social responsibility and business ethics before concluding the paper. Four Articles All four articles center their focus on business ethics. Of the four articles, three are scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles and one, by Friedman, is an online periodical

Social Responsibilities and Moral Character of Business Milton Friedman was a 20th century American economist who advocated free-market capitalism. In 1970 he submitted an editorial article entitled “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits” to the New York Times. In the article, Friedman argues that in free market systems it is nonsensical to make corporate entities adhere to “social responsibilities of business” pushed by activists, as corporations are artificial in nature

The first two journal articles that were compared and contrasted were Ala Alahmad’s 2010 article on To Be Ethical or Not to Be: An International Code of Ethics for Leadership and Patrick Murphy’s 2009 article on The Relevance of Responsibility to Ethical Business Decisions. Some key findings of Alahmad’s writings were that ethics and leadership were closely tied together; they were found to be derivatives of one another. He mentioned that ethics is an individual thought process of making good or

Milton Friedman Michelle Meyer MBA604 November 6, 2016 Ron Myszkowski Milton Friedman In his paper, The Social Responsibilities of Business is to Increase its Profits (Friedman, 1970), Milton Friedman discusses social responsibility and what he feels it means in the business arena. He goes on to say “A corporation is an artificial person” (Friedman, 1970) and since this is not a real person, cannot have any responsibilities. While a corporation or business has a leader or board of

Milton Friedman the Goal of the Firm The three goals of the firm are to maximum market value, maximum share price, and maximum value of owner equity. Milton Friedman asserts the only responsibility of a business is to increase its profits. Friedman reasons that corporate executives are employees of the owners of the business, or the stockholders, and as such have a fiduciary duty as agents to principals. The concept of social responsibility implies something other than to increase profits and if

Milton Friedman is known in the business world for not having patience, he believes that companies are not truly concerned with making a profit but they are also promoting social conscience and need to take care of the employees, abolishing discrimination and pollution (Friedman, 1970, p. 3). In this article Friedman that the social responsibility of any company is to increase profits year over year (Friedman, 1970). Friedman believes if you give your employees the right to use their social responsibility

areas of business and nonprofit management. However, Cohen’s article on social responsibility drew a lot attention from other scholars like Friedman. In view of this, this paper will discuss and define the concept of social responsibility of a business to its workers, stakeholders, and society; how the perspectives align with that of Drucker; comparing Cohen’s opinion with that of Friedman and finally determines which of the two individual’s opinion best aligns with the current business climate promoting

Stakeholders encase all individuals and groups who in one way or another are impacted by the presence, successes, or failure of a business. Employees, suppliers, managers, the community, customers, competition, the government, and stockholders are all considered, in the broadest sense, to be stakeholders. Stockholders, unlike the rest, in addition to being stakeholders, are their own little group. Stockholders are the owners or public and private limited companies. Companies have the right to restrict

Freeman vs. Friedman In their theories of how a business should operate, R. Edward Freeman and Milton Friedman hold virtually opposite beliefs as to what businesses’ responsibilities should be. In favor of the Stakeholder theory, Freeman believes that any person or organization that has a “stake” in the business should also play a role of participation in the business’s actions and decisions. In the other corner of the ring stands Milton Friedman, who holds the belief that said business is only responsible

paper is to assess an article written by William Cohen (2009) which outlines Peter Drucker’s description of the role of social responsibility in business organizations and society. This paper will compare similarities and differences between Cohen’s perspective on social responsibility to the social responsibility and business ethics theories of Drucker and Milton Friedman. Furthermore, this paper will provide a frame of reference on corporate social responsibility and business ethics presented in