? In the following two essays we will consider the social responsibility of corporations. So putting aside the questions of whether corporations are persons or not or what rights and obligations corporations may have, we now consider whether corporations or CEOs owe anything to the public good? Whether corporations can/ought to engage in social action and philanthropy? Does a corporation have nay responsibility beyond the service to its stockholders?
? Friedman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist (which doesn't necessarily mean he is right). He rejects the notion that corporations owe anything toward the public good. Corporate officials' and labor leaders' moral responsibility is to serve the interests of their stockholders or their members?to make them money. For Friedman anything outside of service to stockholders is not only unnecessary but is morally wrong because it represents a misuse of funds. At bottom, Friedman, for many reasons, thinks it is dangerous for corporations to engage in philanthropy.
Corporate social responsibility
? So long as a business does not commit fraud, conducting business in a society is an exercise of our natural right to liberty.
? "Natural rights are generally understood to be those entitlements that are held to obtain independent of any sort of voluntary agreement on the part of others"(Intro. 345). Any obligation placed on the businessperson, therefore, is an infringement of his/her right to liberty. Corporations should not engage in changing the world but exist as an expression of freedom within its existing parameters.
? Corporations acting out of self-interest is in the best inte ...