Social responsibility essay

The issues of social responsibility in business are rather controversial and many-sided. There is a number of pro and con arguments, which are built on theoretical and practical approaches. In order to prove, that social responsibility should be an integrate part of policy of any company we will have to study the notion of social responsibility first.

“Social responsibility is an ethical or ideological theory that an entity whether it is a government, corporation, organization or individual has a responsibility to society but this responsibility can be “negative,” in that it is a responsibility to refrain from acting (resistance stance) or it can be “positive,” meaning there is a responsibility to act (proactive stance)” (Kaliski, 2001). What is really important is that social responsibility should not be associated only with governmental practices and work of activist groups, but with business enterprises as well.

This is evident that as distinct from laws, i.e. legal responsibilities, social responsibilities are voluntary and are not defined concretely by any law. The major basis for social responsibility can be the idea that “it is better to be proactive towards a problem rather than reactive to it” (Kaliski, 2001). The most vivid contra arguments to social responsibility application in business are presented by Milton Friedman; he explained that social responsibility is aimed at limitation of physical force and fraud application and should serve the increase of profits of the company.

He never stated directly that business should not provide help for community, but he insisted, that it should be present only in order to “generate goodwill” and thereby increase profits (Pride, 2008).

In reality, application of social responsibility can contribute to financial growth and development of a business, however this is not correct to consider social responsibility only as a source of profit increase. Workers of the company should feel safe and comfortable working for their company; besides not a single business can exists apart from the society as a whole, on the contrary it is closely linked to it and due to this, every company should have social responsibilities.



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