Social responsibility of businesses Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Social responsibility of businesses - Essay Example If they are to be civil servants taxing and spending for "social" objectives, then they must be elected. Conversely, when the individual proprietor exercises his "social responsibility," he is spending his own money and is justifiable. So the social responsibility of businesses is to increase its profits ethically in free and open competition (Milton, 1970). Stakeholders include owners (who have a financial stake with expectation of returns, employees with their livelihood at stake expectant of security, benefits and meaningful work), suppliers (have their survival at stake and determine the firm's success, customers (exchange resources for products to profit the firm and benefit from the products), the local community (grants the right to firms to construct and returned with good facilities) and management. Management's stake is akin to the employees with the duty to safeguard the welfare of corporation, by resolving conflicts among conflicting stakeholders and balance their interes ts based on a doctrine of fairness (Ed, 1994). The disagreement lies in management. For Ed, the management still fulfils its role as long as the interests of the stakeholders are met with equality (Ed, 1994). As for Milton, once the manager is not an elected civil servant who taxes and spends the proceeds for "social purposes", he seizes to be manager (Milton, 1970). In his article, he explained that w... In his article, he explained that we act as consumers to get what we want for ourselves and we act as citizens to achieve what we think is right or best for the community (Sagoff). This implies that when we will think of national goals, they will go beyond our self-mere interest. Based on this distinction there will be a significant ethical difference between risk that is taken by the consumers (who chooses smoking) and risk that is imposed on them as citizens (subjected to the radioactive waste). Therefore in view of the cost benefit analysis, which sides the consumers, is not an adequate solution to address environmental concerns as it does not allow us "to have power to act as a nation", because we are not "able to acton a public philosophy, conviction, or faith" (Sagoff). 3.2 Name three steps along the roadmap Lovins, Lovins and Hawkin describe. The first step is to dramatically increase the productivity of natural resources by reducing the wasteful and destructive flow of resources from depletion to population through fundamental changes in both production design and technology. The second step is the shift to biologically inspired models where systems can be designed to eliminate the use of toxic materials, which can hamper nature's ability to reprocess materials (closed-loop manufacturing). The third step would be a move to a solutions-based business model where the new relationship from this model of delivering value as a flow of service will align the interest of providers and customers in ways that reward them for implementing the first two steps. 4.1 What are Reich's arguments against corporate social responsibility Make a list, with one sentence summarizing each. "1. Why the interest" describes the increase of interest in "corporate social