Abstract

The article presents the author's views on social responsibility of business. He discusses both the roles the businessman can play in bringing about social change, making meaningful changes within the rules, and then changing the rules. The author says that it does not involve the equally difficult moral and ethical problems of corporate responsibility for the spillover effects of their products on pollution, their manufacture of war materials, or their investment of corporate funds in unpopular countries. One social responsibility of business can be to use its resources and engage in activities to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in free and open competition without deception or fraud. The author claims that businessmen overlook the role of corporate contributions in achieving social change. Earlier corporate management did not have legal sanction in channeling shareholder money to various institutions. Today, corporate contributions are about one billion dollars a year. If businesspeople want to have a healthy mixed economy with both public and private education and public and private medical facilities, much more will be needed.