Ge Case Study Essay

Milton Friedman continues with Smith’s line of logic as he asserts that the chief concern of the businessman must be to make a profit under socially acceptable means and that the defining of “social responsibilities” must be left in the political sphere. Celgene’s chief executive, John Jackson, was the primary force behind the company’s decision to raise prices. Jackson’s actions are perfectly ethical according to Friedman who writes, “What does it mean to say that the corporate executive has a “social responsibility” in his capacity as a businessman? If this statement is not pure rhetoric, it must mean that he is to act in some way that is not in the interest of

What is the corporation’s social responsibility? Many might say the main idea is that a corporation must go further than carrying out their basic function of purely making profits. A corporation must create wealth in ways that avoid under minding society, and instead enrich the society it operates in. The term “corporate social responsibility” has been defined in numerous ways; from the constricted economic perception of increasing stockholder wealth (Friedman, 1962), to economic, legal, ethical and flexible strands of accountability (Carroll, 1979) to good corporate social responsibility to citizens (Hemphill, 2004). These disparities differ from fundamental assumptions of what corporate social responsibility involves. However, one has to keep in mind that the CEO of any corporation is legally the agent of the stockholder, and must focus on what the shareholder wants. More often than not, the shareholder would prefer profits for individual gain rather than spending their money on social projects. Stakeholder groups have increased their influence to enact their agendas. Using profits to fund schools and partake in fixing the environment are all great and wonderful things, but this social tax of using profits for social ends projects goes entirely against democracy. Or does it? Who should truly be held responsible for stakeholders around the corporation? Is it the responsibility of the government, philanthropists, employees, its

The ethical issues presented in this case are the different views that each individual has on how the idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR). This dispute is between Mr. Milton Friedman, John Mackey, and T.J. Rodgers; all of which has a different outlook on CSR. The definition of CSR refers to the responsibilities that business has to the society in which it operates and to those actions that a business can be held accountable. Most philosophers have come up with three different types of responsibilities that corporations can be held accountable for. The first and most important of the three is a corporation’s duty to not cause harm. If a corporation can

This report’s objective is to provide analysis of the leadership challenge that General Electric (GE) is currently facing, and to recommend solutions. The primary problem is determining what kind of candidate is required to replace retiring CEO Jack Welch. This has left GE to question how much does the company want to change policy over the previous era, and where does the company want to be in future?

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.

1. The message that the author gives in this article is that Ford completely disregards safety and ethics when making the Ford Pinto. Not only does Ford disregard safety, but they also try to cover up the fact that they are killing many people in the process. The author, gives many examples, and puts emphasis on the fact that Ford took seven years to fix the Pinto problem. The author says that Ford was a case of corporate malpractice in the auto industry. 2.

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

My argument is that Friedman is not correct. Friedman’s description of the business process of undemocratic is agreeable. However, the corporate executive must be fully qualified to an confident in spending the stockholders or customers or employees money and must in fact know how to spend it. This is in total contradiction to one of Friedman’s essential claims. The corporate executive who accomplishes social responsibility outcomes with the limited time, funds, and effort allocated to him / her is doubtedly providing forward the profitability, awareness, and value of the brands which him / her represents. Customers express value in their purchases. Any causal reading will clearly indicate the value both the American and global customers place

Did GE in the Welch era fulfill its social responsibility duty? Could it have done better? What should it have done?

a. Milton Friedman’s philosophy of corporate responsibility is that “social matters are not the concern of business people and that these problems should be resolved by the unfettered workings of the free market system”. As harsh as it may sound, what he mean course to say was that a business has “to make as much money as possible while conforming to basic rules of society”. Meanwhile, Archie Carroll’s philosophy states that a business has “four kinds of social responsibilities” that a firm must address in their corporate social responsibility, which are economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic duties. Clearly they have two very different views. Friedman sees that a business’s ultimate goal is to generate profits, then comes the legal and ethical responsibilities it must fulfill. To Friedman, there is no need to be philanthropic because the firm’s job is only to make money for the economy, and it is the economy’s obligation to be philanthropic with the profits. Carroll agrees with Friedman that a company must be profitable, then be legal by obeying the law, and be ethical to avoid harm. However, Carroll believes it is also desired and in the best interests of the company to be philanthropic because it will “create a good corporate citizen”. Friedman has an economic view whereas Carroll has a social view. In my opinion, Archie Carroll’s philosophy on corporate social responsibility is more accurate. The social pyramid model he made to go with his views makes

Jack Welch’s vision of what GE was possible of gave the company a vision for twenty years while he was the CEO and chairman. He states, “leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.” (Winning, pg 67) He not only allowed for employees to stretch, but demanded it. In teaching workers to stretch Welch knew that workers “may fail. In fact, they probably will fail. But stretching, and stretching the business, is going to improve performance results.” (Jack Welch on Leadership, pg 105) He also states that “only by setting the performance bar high did it become possible to discover people’s capabilities.” Jack Welch’s emphasis on candor and breaking the bureaucracy of modern business separated him from his contemporaries. He excited others of the possibility of being the biggest and best company in the world and rewarding his best employees that shared the values of GE. According to FORTUNE Editorial Director Geoffrey Colvin In "The Ultimate Manager, Welch leads the annals of management history not for anticipating the new world's changes ahead, but for acting on them: "His great achievement is that having seen it, he faced up to the huge, painful changes it demanded, and made them faster and more emphatically than anyone else in business. He led managers into this new world, which we still inhabit, and just as important, he showed business

Oddly enough, Enron had a CSR strategy with a very good reputation for having a strong and well respected corporate responsibility known for generosity to the community and being environmentally responsible. (Sims & Brinkmann, 2003). In hindsight we see that they were playing CSR. Former CFO, Jeff Skilling once told a colleague, “Mike, we are a green energy company, but the green stands for money” (Bradley, 2008). The public should be very cautious when it comes to companies and their CSR efforts as unfortunately some are just

Friedman and the supporter of his views argue that for all publically traded firms, CEOs are agents of the shareholder, and by virtue of them being in that role, their primary fiduciary responsibility is to watch the interest of the shareholders and maximize the returns to the shareholders. Inasmuch as that, all decisions from the managers of these firms have to be for one and only one purpose – maximizing the shareholder’s profit. These include decisions that authorize spending of the firm’s money on activities of Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR). Any act performed by the managers that violates their primary fiduciary responsibility and reduces the returns to the shareholders can be compared to the act of stealing, thereby making that act illegal and unethical.

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).

For a long time now, there has been much debate over the social responsibility of a business. Friedman is one of the most influential