Social Responsibility And Shareholder Theory

Milton Friedman’s shareholder theory of management says that the purpose of a business is to make money for the owner or the stockholders of the business. Friedman says that there is only one social responsibility for the business: to use its resources in order to increase

In this essay we are taking a look at the famous Milton Friedman's essay "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Profit ". The following paper is an attempt to critically evaluate the article in consideration of Freeman Stakeholder Theory.

Because corporations are established to profit and shareholders invest money with expectations of a greater return, managers cannot be given a directive to be “socially responsible” without providing specific criteria of checks and balances to which needs to adhere. Therefore, it is imperative to the success of a corporation for managers to not act solely but rather to act within the policies of the shareholders.

Many believe that business entities should have an ethical duty to be socially responsible, to work towards increasing its positive effects on society while decreasing its negative effects. Many organizations look for opportunities to be socially responsible while also creating shareholder wealth.

Every business has a social responsibility toward society. That means to maximize positive affects and minimize negative affects on the society. Social responsibilities includes economic-to produce goods and services, that society needs at the price, that satisfy both-business and consumers, legal

In Friedman’s article, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profit, he gives two arguments for what, if any, social responsibilities a business has and why they have it. In his arguments, he presents a businessman in charge of running the business on behalf of the owner. The first point he raises in dictating what responsibilities the businessman should fulfill involves defining the businessman’s purpose. He was hired as an agent of the shareholders, the owners of the business, etc. to make the business profitable. Barring some eleemosynary functions, as Friedman states, such as hospitals and schools, the general purpose of a business is to make money, therefore, the responsibilities of an agent of the business would be to increase said profits. To do otherwise would be to fulfill a purpose other than the one he was hired for and betray the owners.

To begin with, I want to clarify what is the role of business in society and social responsibility of the corporation. Destination of business has always been the same, to innovate and delivered products and services, to build and maintain the condition of well-being, to use resources effectively. What is different today is the social context in which companies are managing.

3.Business to External Environment. Because businesses exist within a community from which they take resources, businesses have ethical responsibilities to the community. This obligation to protect and enhance the society is called Social Responsibility. This also includes responsibilities to the customers from which they earn profits. The main areas of Social Responsibility are:

The prevalent view of business’ social responsibility is Milton Friedman’s agent-owner theory. His thesis mainly says that“ There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage

Therefore when Friedman mentions the role of a corporate executive, it doesn’t make sense for an individual working towards improving the business to care about social responsibilities if it isn’t a desire of his employer (Friedman, 1970). A corporate executive should only worry about social responsibility in his personal life not when the corporations stakeholders and employers money is at stake (Friedman, 1970). When a corporate executive acts voluntarily, he is “acting as a principle, not an agent; he is spending his money or time or energy…” (Friedman, 1970,

Nevertheless, Friedman pointed out that the profits has taken the firms in to the hand of business intellectuals by which Friedman recommend that the financial system by which the organisation run its business is in the restricted responsibility protection which makes the organisations to privatise their profits (Friedman 1970 pp. 177-184). Friedman also suggested that according to him the shareholder theory in terms of socially responsible can only increase the profit. But on the other hand shareholder theory of Edward Freeman completely support the theory of shareholder towards its role to be socially responsible in the society and maximising the profits for the benefits of shareholders within the firms and society as well (Freeman 2008 pp. 162-165).

Milton Friedman wrote in his famous 1970’s article in The New York Times Magazine, that “the one and only social responsibility of business, is to increase profits for shareholders.” Milton Friedman's view on business responsibility accentuates the importance of maximizing firm's value. He pointed that the “there is one and only one social responsibility of business –to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engaged in open and free completion without deception or fraud’’ and by taking on the burden of social cost, the business becomes less efficient (Milton Friedman, 1962).

Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician and writer, who had a massive impact on the research agenda of the economics profession. His famous words “the only responsibility of business is to increase its profits” (Friedman, Milton. 1970) led to many controversial debates on whether businesses should have ethics or if profit should be their main goal. Corporate social responsibility has many definitions, as its interpretation is quite loose, so I have chosen one that relates the most to this essay, given by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, in 2000: “Corporate social

The maximization of profit is necessary for a corporation to be sustained in long run however the amount that can meet the stockholders needs should be enough. On the other hand with changeable living conditions, the needs can change and in this case, the responsibility of business is adapting itself according to direction of this change. John Friedman says, “That is the piece that Mr Friedman's argument missed. The rules of the game have changed in fundamental ways -- and people today expect (and demand) more of business than simply that they maximize their profits without coming to grief by some violation of

The responsibility of corporate executives is to comply with the desires and objectives of the owners. Since the corporate executive is essentially an employee of the owners their primary job is to complete their wishes in an effective manner. Typically, the main objective of the owners is to make as much money as possible while still running an ethical business. While this is their primary responsibility, corporate executives also have responsibilities to personal matters such as family, personal goals, etc. However, these responsibilities are not completed using company money, resources, etc. so they cannot really be considered responsibilities of the corporate executive position itself or the business as a whole, but instead of that particular individual. The ethical responsibilities that are held by businesses are a little muddy. Since executives are agents of the owners, spending company money for the betterment of society is not entirely their decision. Since the goal of the company is first and foremost to make a profit, using the money for social or political purposes is in direct opposition with this goal. While it would be ideal if executives could justify spending money to reduce pollution, or decrease unemployment, this is not always the case as it is not their money to spend. From this viewpoint, making a profit is the main responsibility held by corporate executives and there are not any clear ethical responsibilities that businesses have to society in