preview

Literature Review Of Corporate Social Responsibility

Better Essays

Literature Review
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the concept of businesses considering economic, social and environmental benefits for all their stakeholders. Friedman’s position on CSR appears very negative, his argument is the only social responsibility businesses have is to exploit their capabilities to increase profits, therefore implying businesses solely aim to increase profits while disregarding social and environmental factors (Friedman, 1970). I disagree with this view because I believe businesses are required to undertake social responsibilities, such as recycling and using fair trade ingredients, to provide customer satisfaction and create a good public image. If customers were not satisfied with the products or services, they purchase or thought they were buying from an unethical company this could decrease demand and profits. Therefore, CSR is important to businesses because businesses need customers to survive and a method of retaining or gaining customers is to be socially responsible.
Additionally, although Friedman makes his view of businesses’ only social responsibility being to increase profits, this is problematic, as he provides no data or explanation for why he believes this. Friedman (1970) expresses businesses ‘engage in activities’ to increase profits, this could imply CSR activities are used only as a method of improving public image to gain profits, but he provides no evidence to support this. As Friedman (1970) does not specify the

Get Access