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• Andrew Carnegie - In 1889, Carnegie wrote an article for the North American Review, entitled "The Gospel of Wealth". He, like Gandhi, advanced the idea that the rich are merely trustees of wealth and that they have a duty to use their resources to benefit society. He took his admonishment to others to heart and spent the last two decades of his life giving away the great bulk of his fortune. He advocated benevolent, paternalistic leadership and enunciated
  - Charity Principle and
  - Stewardship Principle

• Keith Davis feels that social responsibility is often referred to as having risen from an Enlightened Self Interest, where organizations realize that it is in their own best interest to act in ways that community considers socially responsible. He talks about the "Iron Law of Responsibility". In the long run, those who do not use power in a way society considers responsible will tend to loose it.

The view presented in the paper on the business of business tends to be more biased towards Keith Davis.

Problems with Existing Theories

First, we try and understand why Friedman is wrong in claiming that the only responsibility a corporation owes is to its shareholders. Modern organizations unlike the organizations of primitive capitalism belong to a multitude of shareholders. These shareholders, who may be passive in most cases, cannot be expected to provide direction to the organization. Most shareholders rarely ever take part in the AGM meetings or exercise their voting rights, and hence, the managers assume roles more than just that of a trustee. Hence, to claim that the only thing that the shareholders are concerned about is the profit may not hold especially in the cases when corporate actions effect the environment and other common resources.

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* Contributed by: -
Saurabh Goswami & Malini Pande,
II Year Students,
IIM Kozhikode.