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Book ChapterDOI

The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits

Milton Friedman
- pp 173-178
TLDR
When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system, I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract
When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the “social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system”, I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned “merely” with profit but also with promoting desirable “social” ends; that business has a “social conscience” and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact they are — or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously -preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.

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Journal ArticleDOI

Introduction to the Special Issue: Globalization as a Challenge for Business Responsibilities

TL;DR: The authors assesses some of the implications of globalization for the scholarly debate on business ethics, CSR and related concepts, and discusses the ambivalent results of such a process for a responsible corporate role in a globalized world.
Journal ArticleDOI

Corporate Social Responsibility and Earnings Quality: International Evidence

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate whether the corporate social responsibility orientation of a firm affects its reporting incentives, in terms of the trade-off between real earnings management (REM) and accrual-based earnings management, and they find that CSR-oriented firms are less likely to engage in REM than in AEM.
Journal ArticleDOI

Corporate Social Responsibility, Noise, and Stock Market Volatility

TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that corporate social responsibility is not systematically correlated with companies' economic fundamentals and that opportunistic managers are incentivized to distort information provided to market participants about their firms' corporate social concern.

Applying Stakeholder Theory to e-Government - Benefits and Limits.

TL;DR: This paper summarizes stakeholder theory, discusses its premises and justifications, compares its tracks, sheds light on recent attempts to join the two tracks, and discusses the benefits and limits of its practical applicability to the public sector using the case of a recent New York State e-Government initiative.
Journal ArticleDOI

For business or the good of all? A Finnish approach to corporate social responsibility

TL;DR: The authors in this paper suggest that the prominent driving force behind corporate social responsibility (CSR) is companies' long-term profitability, supported by company leadership and efficiency, competitiveness, and the ability to anticipate the future.
References
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Journal Article

Best Practice for Customer Satisfaction in Manufacturing Firms

TL;DR: In this article, the authors report the results of their investigation into the best practices of four manufacturing firms with reputations for delivering high levels of customer satisfaction, and suggest ways companies can improve their customer satisfaction measures and practices.
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Business marketing management : A Strategic view of industrial and organizational markets

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide a complete treatment of business-to-business marketing, including market analysis, relationship management, supply chain management, marketing strategy development and electronic commerce.
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Business marketing management

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an overview of the business-to-business marketing environment, including how buyers buy, how to identify the customer, and how to make and move the goods.
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Industrial market segmentation

TL;DR: A conceptual approach to the segmentation of industrial markets together with results from an exploratory survey of current segmentation practices in industry and two examples to encourage appropriate use of market segmentation in planning and control of marketing strategies are presented.
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