Three Models of Corporate Social Responsibility Assignment

Three Models of Corporate Social Responsibility - Assignment Example The proliferation of mass media and web-based information highway has increased social and environmental awareness globally in the last 20 years. The increase in democratic societies since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and crumbling of dictatorships in the developing world, has meant that many local communities previously disenfranchised, and exploited by unscrupulous business activities now have avenues for demanding greater social responsibility from corporations. The Nobel Prize-winning Economist, Milton Friedman is well known for his argument against Corporate Social Responsibility for a business organization. Friedman (1970) argues firstly that human beings having a moral responsibility for their actions, not corporations, secondly that managers have the sole responsibility to act only in the interests of shareholders and lastly the fact that social issues and problems are the proper province of the state rather than corporate managers. Crane and Matten (2004), disagree with Friedman’s premise and argue that it is crucial that the fundamental nature of the business operations is questioned. They argue that corporations have to have some sense of moral responsibility in the very same way that individuals are responsible for their actions. They are the legal responsibility of corporations that demand that businesses abide by the law, but a moral dimension also requires that they be socially and environmentally responsible. The social responsibilities they refer to includes aspects of charitable donations, the building of schools or learning centers in communities, sponsoring of arts and cultural events, as well as funding secondary and tertiary scholarships for the gifted indigent in the community they do business.