Learning Objective
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Corporations as ResponsibleA Civil Action was originally a novel, but more people have seen the movie, which was distributed by W. W. Hodkinson’s old company, Paramount. One of the memorable scenes is John Travolta playing a hotshot lawyer speeding up a rural highway to Woburn, Massachusetts. He gets pulled over and ticketed. Then he continues on his way to investigate whether there’s any money to be made launching a lawsuit against a company that allowed toxic industrial waste to escape into the town’s aquifer. The polluted water, Travolta suspects, eventually surfaced as birth defects. After checking things out, he races his Porsche back to Boston at the same speed. Same result.A Civil Action, directed by Steven Zaillian (New York: Scott Rudin, 1998), film. One of the movie’s messages is that many corporations are like greedy lawyers—they have little sense of right and wrong, and their behavior can only be modified by money. The lesson is that you can’t make Travolta slow down and drive safely by appealing to the right of others to use the road without being threatened by speeding Porsches, or by pleading with him to respect general social well-being that is served when everyone travels at about the same speed. If you want him to slow down, there’s only one effective strategy: raise the traffic ticket fine. Make the money hurt. Analogously for companies, if you want them to stop polluting, hit them with harder penalties when they’re caught. What if that’s not the only way for corporations to exist in the world, though? What if people who directed businesses began understanding their enterprise not only in financial terms (as profits and losses) but also in ethical ones? What if companies became, in a certain moral sense, like people, members of society bound by the same kinds of duties and responsibilities that you and I wrestle with every day? When companies are seen that way, a conception of corporate social responsibility comes forward. Three Approaches to Corporate ResponsibilityAccording to the traditional view of the corporation, it exists primarily to make profits. From this money-centered perspective, insofar as business ethics are important, they apply to moral dilemmas arising as the struggle for profit proceeds. These dilemmas include: “What obligations do organizations have to ensure that individuals seeking employment or promotion are treated fairly?” “How should conflicts of interest be handled?” and “What kind of advertising strategy should be pursued?” Most of this textbook has been dedicated to these and similar questions. While these dilemmas continue to be important throughout the economic world, when businesses are conceived as holding a wide range of economic and civic responsibilities as part of their daily operation, the field of business ethics expands correspondingly. Now there are large sets of issues that need to be confronted and managed outside of, and independent of the struggle for money. Broadly, there are three theoretical approaches to these new responsibilities:
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)The title corporate social responsibilityIn general, the conviction that corporations are not only legal entities with responsibilities but also moral entities, and they hold ethical obligations comparable to those of citizens in a society. has two meanings. First, it’s a general name for any theory of the corporation that emphasizes both the reponsibility to make money and the responsibility to interact ethically with the surrounding community. Second, corporate social responsibility is also a specific conception of that responsibility to profit while playing a role in broader questions of community welfare. As a specific theory of the way corporations interact with the surrounding community and larger world, corporate social responsibility (CSR)As a specific theory of business ethics, a package of four obligations the corporation holds as an independent ethical actor in society; the responsibilities are economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic. is composed of four obligations:
Taken in order from top to bottom, these four obligations are decreasingly pressing within the theory of corporate social responsibility. After satisfying the top responsibility, attention turns to the second and so on. At the extremes, the logic behind this ranking works easily. A law firm on the verge of going broke probably doesn’t have the responsibility to open up for school visits, at least not if the tours interfere with the accumulation of billable hours and revenue. Obviously, if the firm does go broke and out of business, there won’t be any school visits in any case, so faced with financial hardship, lawyers are clearly obligated to fulfill their economic obligations before philanthropic ones. More difficult questions arise when the economic responsibility conflicts with the legal one. For example, to remain profitable, an industrial plant may need to dispose of waste and toxins in barrels that barely meet legally required strengths. Assuming those legal limits are insufficiently strict to guarantee the barrels’ seal, the spirit of the law may seem violated. The positive economic aspect of the decision to cut corners is the ability to stay in business. That means local workers won’t lose their jobs, the familial stresses of unemployment will be avoided, suppliers will maintain their contracts, and consumers will still be served. The negative, however, is the possibility—and the reality at Woburn—that those toxins will escape their containers and leave a generation of workers’ children poisoned. Knowing what we do now about those Woburn children, there’s no real conflict; anything would have been better than letting the toxins escape. If necessary, the company should have accepted bankruptcy before causing the social damage it did. At the time of the decision, however, there may have been less certainty about exactly what the risks and benefits were. Even among individuals promoting a strong sense of corporate responsibility for the surrounding community, there may have been no clear answer to the question about the proper course of action. Regardless, corporate social responsibility means every business holds four kinds of obligations and should respond to them in order: first the economic, then the legal, next the ethical, and finally the philanthropic. The Triple Bottom LineThe triple bottom lineA form of corporate social responsibility dictating that corporate leaders tabulate results not only in economic terms but also in terms of company effects in the social realm and with respect to the environment. is a form of corporate social responsibility dictating that corporate leaders tabulate bottom-line results not only in economic terms (costs versus revenue) but also in terms of company effects in the social realm, and with respect to the environment. There are two keys to this idea. First, the three columns of reponsibility must be kept separate, with results reported independently for each. Second, in all three of these areas, the company should obtain sustainable results. The notion of sustainability is very specific. At the intersection of ethics and economics, sustainability means the long-term maintenance of balance. As elaborated by theorists including John Elkington, here’s how the balance is defined and achieved economically, socially, and environmentally:
Together, these three notions of sustainability—economic, social, and environmental—guide businesses toward actions fitted to the conception of the corporation as a participating citizen in the community and not just as a money machine. One deep difference between corporate social responsibility and the triple bottom line is cultural. The first is more American, the second European. Americans, accustomed to economic progress, tend to be more comfortable with, and optimistic about, change. Collectively, Americans want business to transform the world, and ethical thinking is there (hopefully) to help the transformations maximize improvement across society. Europeans, accustomed to general economic decline with respect to the United States, view change much less favorably. Their inclination is to slow development down, and to keep things the same as far as possible. This outlook is naturally suited to sustainability as a guiding value. It’s important to note that while sustainability as a business goal puts the breaks on the economic world, and is very conservative in the (nonpolitical) sense that it favors the current situation over a changed one, that doesn’t mean recommending a pure freeze. Sustainability isn’t the same as LudditismResistance to all technological development., which is a flat resistance to all technological change. The Luddites were a band of textile workers in Britain in the 1800s who saw (correctly) that mechanized looms would soon rob them not only of their livelihood but also of their way of life. To stop the change, they invaded a few factories and broke everything in sight. Their brute strategy succeeded very briefly and then failed totally. Today, Ludditism is the general opposition to new technologies in any industry on the grounds that they tear the existing social fabric: they force people to change in the workplace and then everyplace, whether they like it or not. There’s an element of (perhaps justifiable) fear of the future in both Ludditism and the business ethics of sustainability, but there are differences between the two also. For example, sustainability concerns don’t always stand against technological advances. Actually, innovation is favored as long as advances are made in the name of maintaining the status quo. For example, advances in wind power generation may allow our society to continue using energy as we do, even as oil reserves dwindle, and with the further benefit of limiting air pollution. Stakeholder TheoryStakeholder theory, which has been described by Edward Freeman and others, is the mirror image of corporate social responsibility. Instead of starting with a business and looking out into the world to see what ethical obligations are there, stakeholder theory starts in the world. It lists and describes those individuals and groups who will be affected by (or affect) the company’s actions and asks, “What are their legitimate claims on the business?” “What rights do they have with respect to the company’s actions?” and “What kind of responsibilities and obligations can they justifiably impose on a particular business?” In a single sentence, stakeholder theory affirms that those whose lives are touched by a corporation hold a right and obligation to participate in directing it. As a simple example, when a factory produces industrial waste, a CSR perspective attaches a responsibility directly to factory owners to dispose of the waste safely. By contrast, a stakeholder theorist begins with those living in the surrounding community who may find their environment poisoned, and begins to talk about business ethics by insisting that they have a right to clean air and water. Therefore, they’re stakeholders in the company and their voices must contribute to corporate decisions. It’s true that they may own no stock, but they have a moral claim to participate in the decision-making process. This is a very important point. At least in theoretical form, those affected by a company’s actions actually become something like shareholders and owners. Because they’re touched by a company’s actions, they have a right to participate in managing it. Who are the stakeholders surrounding companies? The answer depends on the particular business, but the list can be quite extensive. If the enterprise produces chemicals for industrial use and is located in a small Massachusetts town, the stakeholders include:
The first five on the list—shareholders, workers, customers, suppliers, and community—may be cited as the five cardinal stakeholders. The outer limits of stakeholding are blurry. In an abstract sense, it’s probably true that everyone in the world counts as a stakeholder of any serious factory insofar as we all breathe the same air and because the global economy is so tightly linked that decisions taken in a boardroom in a small town on the East Coast can end up costing someone in India her job and the effects keep rippling out from there. In practical terms, however, a strict stakeholder theory—one insistently bestowing the power to make ethical claims on anyone affected by a company’s action—would be inoperable. There’d be no end to simply figuring out whose rights needed to be accounted for. Realistically, the stakeholders surrounding a business should be defined as those tangibly affected by the company’s action. There ought to be an unbroken line that you can follow from a corporate decision to an individual’s life. Once a discrete set of stakeholders surrounding an enterprise has been located, stakeholder ethicsStakeholders are individuals and groups who are affected by a company’s actions; the theory holds that a corporation’s stakeholders have a right and obligation to participate in directing the business. may begin. The purpose of the firm, underneath this theory, is to maximize profit on a collective bottom line, with profit defined not as money but as human welfare. The collective bottom lineWithin stakeholder ethics, the summed effect of a company’s actions on all stakeholders. is the summed effect of a company’s actions on all stakeholders. Company managers, that means, are primarily charged not with representing the interests of shareholders (the owners of the company) but with the more social task of coordinating the interests of all stakeholders, balancing them in the case of conflict and maximizing the sum of benefits over the medium and long term. Corporate directors, in other words, spend part of the day just as directors always have: explaining to board members and shareholders how it is that the current plans will boost profits. They spend other parts of the day, however, talking with other stakeholders about their interests: they ask for input from local environmentalists about how pollution could be limited, they seek advice from consumers about how product safety could be improved and so on. At every turn, stakeholders are treated (to some extent) like shareholders, as people whose interests need to be served and whose voices carry real force. In many cases transparency is an important value for those promoting stakeholder ethics. The reasoning is simple: if you’re going to let every stakeholder actively participate in a corporation’s decision making, then those stakeholders need to have a good idea about what’s going on. In the case of W. R. Grace, for example, it’s important to see that a stakeholder theory would not necessarily and immediately have acted to prohibit the dumping of toxins into the soil. Instead, the theory demands that all those who may be affected know what’s being dumped, what the risks are to people and the environment, and what the costs are of taking the steps necessary to dispose of the chemical runoff more permanently and safely. As already noted, we know now what W. R. Grace should have done under most every ethical theory. At the time, however, stakeholders fully informed of the situation may have been less sure because it wasn’t so clear that the runoff would cause so many problems (or any problems at all). Given that, owners may have favored dumping because that increases profits. Next, what about workers in town? It’s important to keep in mind that the safe removal of the waste may have lowered company profits and potentially caused some layoffs or delayed wage hikes. As stakeholders, they may have been willing to agree to the dumping too. The same goes for community politicians who perhaps would see increased tax revenue as a positive effect of high corporate profits. What’s certain is that stakeholder theory obligates corporate directors to appeal to all sides and balance everyone’s interests and welfare in the name of maximizing benefits across the spectrum of those whose lives are touched by the business. Conclusion on the Three Forms of Corporate Social ResponsibilityTraditionally, the directors of companies have had an extremely difficult but very narrowly defined responsibility: guide the enterprise toward money. The best companies have been those generating the highest sales, gaining the most customers, and clearing the largest profits. As for ethical questions, they’ve been arranged around the basic obligation to represent the owners’ central interest, which presumably is to profit from their investment. Consequently, the field of business ethics has mainly concerned conflicts and dilemmas erupting inside the company as people try to work together to win in the very competitive economic world. The idea of corporate social responsibility—along with the related ideas of the triple bottom line and stakeholder theory—opens a different kind of business ethics. Morality in the economic world is now about corporate directors sensing and responding to a broad range of obligations, ones extending through the town where the business is located and then out into surrounding communities and through society generally. In Woburn, Massachusetts, in the early 1980s, this conflict between two ways of running a business played out in the Hollywood depiction of the lawyer played by John Travolta. At the movie’s beginning, right and wrong for a business got decided in dollars and without broader sensibility. Travolta’s law firm existed to make money and operated by accepting only cases that promised big payouts. That’s what brought Travolta to Woburn, the chance to sue deep-pocketed W. R. Grace for poisoning the land with toxic runoff and for destroying the lives of families living near the pools of contamination. Over the course of the movie, however, Travolta becomes attached to Woburn’s cause and the social good of fighting for a clean environment. By the end, he’s risking his firm’s high profits—and, according to his law-firm partners, all common sense—to make sure that harmed people living in town get their good lives back, and to ensure that a Woburn-like toxic disaster won’t happen again. In terms of business ethics, it’s not difficult to interpret Travolta’s transformation from a businessman taking care of the bottom line, to one engaged by a broader vision of social responsibility. Each of the three discussed theories—corporate social responsibility, the triple bottom line, stakeholder theory—can be fit into the movie A Civil Action. In terms of corporate social responsibility, Travolta came to believe that his job as the law firm’s leader obligated him to satisfy his economic responsibility to make money for the firm by suing for financial damages while also acting legally. Further, his firm needed to satisfy the ethical responsibility to help others in Woburn get their good lives back. Here, there is a basic duty to help others in need when you have the capability. Finally, there was an element of philanthropy in Travolta’s endeavor because his law firm pursued a case that served the greater good even though more profitable work opportunities were available. In terms of the triple bottom line of economics, society, and the environment, Travolta came to believe that his job as the law firm’s leader obligated him to take account of and do well in all three areas. It was no longer enough to win money; his business had a moral responsibility to win for society and to win for the environment also. The long-term goal was to ensure the economic sustainability of his firm, the sustainability of healthy family life in Woburn, and the sustainability of clean earth and air in that part of Massachusetts. In terms of stakeholder ethics, Travolta came to believe that his job as the law firm’s leader obligated him not only to work for the firm’s owners (including himself) but also to take direction from those who would be affected by the firm’s actions. That meant considering—trying to balance and to add up—the interests of his partners and all those who lived in Woburn. Finally, because Travolta’s story was also a Hollywood story, his transformation on the big screen was presented as the change from an aloof bad guy to a caring good guy. It’s not clear, however, in the real world whether a corporate ethics based on social responsibility, the triple bottom line, or all stakeholders is actually recommendable. The debate between the two ways of thinking about business—the traditional, profit-centered view and the broader, socially responsible view—is hard-fought and intensified by good arguments on both sides. Key Takeaways
Review Questions
Which is the best description of Corporate Social Responsibility CSR )? Quizlet?Which of the following statements best describes corporate social responsibility? A corporation's obligation to society that goes beyond the requirements of the law and economics to take into account the social and environmental impact of its decisions.
Which of the following statements is true of the common view of corporate social responsibility CSR )?Which of the following statements is true of the common view of corporate social responsibility (CSR)? It holds that the primary responsibility of managers is to serve shareholders.
What are the 4 main theories of corporate social responsibility?Corporate social responsibility is traditionally broken into four categories: environmental, philanthropic, ethical, and economic responsibility.
Which is the best description of corporate social responsibility?Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is the idea that a company should play a positive role in the community and consider the environmental and social impact of business decisions.
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