INDIVIDUAL VERSUS CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Radu Cristian Muşetescu ()
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Radu Cristian Muşetescu: Faculty of International Business and Economics, Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies, Romania
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No 33, Social Responsibility, Ethics and Sustainable Business from Bucharest University of Economic Studies

Abstract: We explore the basic elements that lay at the foundation of the concept of “corporate social responsibility”. We argue that the debate on the “social responsibility” of artificial or legal (that is, non-natural) persons is a result of the logical error of conceptual realism. Its fault is to extrapolate the rights and obligations of human individuals to corporations that are nothing but social and contractual arrangements between individuals. Such an error has been nurtured by other types of regulations such as the taxation of corporate income. We further argue that such a perspective on businesses is not only based on wrong premises but it is not operational. It puts any decision maker in corporatins in the uneasy situation to arbitrate between different and sometimes conflicting sets of ethical norms. Our conclusion supports the view of Milton Friedman that the only responsibility of businesses is to engage in market transactions and observe the rules of law in the society they operate.

Date: 2012-10
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Published in Working Papers Series on Social Responsibility, Ethics & Sustainable Business

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http://www.csrconferences.org/RePEc/aes/icsrog/2012/2012_1_031.pdf First version, 2012, October (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aes:icsrog:wpaper:33

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