The environmental responsibility of business is to increase its profits (by creating value within the bounds of private property rights)
Pierre Desrochers
Industrial and Corporate Change, 2010, vol. 19, issue 1, 161-204
Abstract:
Proponents of corporate social responsibility (CSR) typically consider "business as usual" unsustainable. Building on historical evidence that long predates the modern environmental movement, the contrary case is made that the interplay of voluntary exchange, private property rights, and self-interest has generally resulted in the so-called "triple bottom line" (economic, social, and environmental) through more efficient use of materials and the continual creation of higher quality resources. However, because market processes continually eliminate less competitive firms and tend to concentrate business activities geographically, political pressure brought to bear by adversely affected vested interests often results in the creation of policies that cause greater environmental harm than would otherwise be evident. Environmental CSR proponents often misinterpret these government failures as market failures, and characteristically advocate policies that further distract firms from their core objective and resulting triple bottom line. The article concludes by arguing that the most promising path toward truly sustainable development lies in the unwavering pursuit of profitability within the bounds of well-defined and enforced private property rights. Copyright 2010 The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtp046 (application/pdf)
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:oup:indcch:v:19:y:2010:i:1:p:161-204
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals
Access Statistics for this article
Industrial and Corporate Change is currently edited by Josef Chytry
More articles in Industrial and Corporate Change from Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().