MILTON FRIEDMAN, MARK S. SCHWARTZ AND CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Both Friedman and Schwartz are well-known for their research in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), but with opposing views. In fact, while Friedman claims that the main obligation of a business is to make a profit whilst conforming to the law and some ethical obligations, Schwartz affirms that companies should have additional ethical and maybe even philanthropic or charitable obligations as well. 1 Use the following notes to prepare an oral presentation. Milton Friedman Mark S. Schwartz Associate Professor of Business Ethics in the Management Area at York University School of Administrative Studies Award-winning researcher and teacher One of the world s most productive authors on business ethics Best Dissertation Award for his PhD dissertation in 2000 Best Article of the Year Award in 2013 Master Teacher in Ethics Award in 2014 2 Founder and leading proponent of monetarism Born in New York on 31 st July 1912 Undergraduate degree from Rutgers University in 1932 Master s degree from the University of Chicago in 1913 Research economist with the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York and with the US Treasury Tax Research Division Doctorate in economics from Columbia University in 1946 Long career in research at the University of Chicago After retirement in 1979, active research and publishing Died in San Francisco on 16 th November 2006 Read the text and decide if the statements are true or false. Correct the false ones. M. Friedman, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits The New York Times Magazine, 13th September 1970 What does it mean to say that business has responsibilities? Only people have responsibilities. A corporation is an artificial person and, in this sense, it may have artificial responsibilities, but business as a whole cannot be said to have responsibilities, even in this vague sense. The first step toward clarity in examining the doctrine of the social responsibility of business is to ask precisely what it implies for whom. Presumably, the individuals who are to be responsible are businessmen, which means individual proprietors or corporate executives. Most of the discussion of social responsibility is directed at corporations, 1. Friedman examines the meaning of business responsibilities. 258 T F so in what follows I shall mostly neglect the individual proprietors and speak of corporate executives. In a free-enterprise, private-property system, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to their basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom. Adapted from: http://websites.umich. edu/~thecore/doc/Friedman.pdf 4. An executive is different from an employee. 2. A corporation is not a physical 5. The responsibility of an executive is person and so it does not have any responsibilities. 3. Both owners and executives are businessmen. to make money whilst respecting the basic rules of society. 6. The rules of society include both legal obligations and ethical customs. T F