How Friedman’s View on Individual Freedom Relates to Stakeholder Theory and Social Contract Theory

Johannes Jahn () and Rolf Brühl ()
Additional contact information
Johannes Jahn: ESCP Europe Business School
Rolf Brühl: ESCP Europe Business School

Journal of Business Ethics, 2018, vol. 153, issue 1, No 4, 52 pages

Abstract: Abstract Friedman’s view on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is often accused of being incoherent and of setting rather low ethical standards for managers. This paper outlines Friedman’s ethical expectations for corporate executives against the backdrop of the strong emphasis he puts on individual freedom. Doing so reveals that the ethical standards he imposes on managers can be strictly deduced from individual freedom and that these standards involve both deontological norms and the fulfillment of particular stakeholder expectations. These insights illustrate the necessity to reconsider how Friedman’s approach relates to other important normative theories of business ethics. Contrasting Friedman’s approach with stakeholder theory and integrative social contract theory—when considering the importance he assigns to individual freedom—shows how and why these approaches differ. Still, the comparison also highlights striking similarities. This paper contributes to a better understanding of Friedman’s position—which is still one of the most influential approaches in business ethics research—because it enables a differentiated look at its strengths and weaknesses.

Keywords: Individual freedom; Integrative social contracts theory; Milton Friedman; Profit maximization; Stakeholder theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-016-3353-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:153:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s10551-016-3353-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-016-3353-x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().