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The life and works of milton friedman
The life and works of milton friedman
The life and works of milton friedman
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“A Civil Action” Assignment 1 As per request of the first assignment of this course, I watched the movie “A Civil Action” starring John Travolta (Jan Schlichtmann), as a plaintiff’s lawyer and Robert Duvall (Jerome Facher) and Bruce Norris (William Cheeseman) as the defendant’s lawyers of W.R. Grace and J Riley Leather companies. The movie depicted the court case fought in the 1980’s among the previously mentioned companies and the residents of Woburn a little town located in Massachusetts. After watching the movie, an analysis using the ethical tools reflected in the chapter 1 of the course textbook will be used to portray the ethical issues of the movie. Free Market Ethics or Social Responsibility (Milton Friedman) “There is only one and only one social responsibility of business- to use its resources and engage in activities designated to increase its profits so long as it decides to stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” Defendant’s side: According with the textbook and other internet sources, Milton Friedman described in his thesis that the main goal of a business is to generate gains or profits. As a result, several business have been using such thesis as a justification for some of the decisions they made. In the case of “A Civil Action” we had the two companies contaminating the little town water with chemicals used during the elaboration of their products. The use of trichloroethylene was apparently causing some of the children of the place to developed respiratory and other cancerous diseases such as leukemia. After the death of several children, people on town began to worry about the situation and everything pointed out ... ... middle of paper ... ...d, thus being moral is a matter of following God rules. In the case of the disposal, withholding information in order to preserve their profits and minimizing their costs was lying, which was a violation of the rights of the people living on the community. The companies benefited from the people living at Woburn not only by using them to produce their goods, but also to hide the evidence of their illicit acts, clearly violating the Kantianism principles of telling the true and taking advantages of others. In the case of the plaintiff’s lawyer was also observable that money mattered more than the truth this was exemplified by Jan words: “the whole idea of a law suit is to settle or compel the other side to settle. You do that by spending more money than you should obligating them to spend more money than they should……” fact that also violated the deontology approach.
While the major ethical error of dumping the chemical is obvious, there are many ethical errors made by Pacific Gas and Electric that make this case compelling an a lesson on how not to act in business. On the flip side, even what Erin was doing could be considered unethical. She is not a lawyer, and should not have been handling a case like this. Obviously the law firm knew this but carried on anyways. It is even worse when she is fired but then hired back because of the papers that she has regarding the contamination by PG&E. This is bribery and a form of corruption which is easily unethical under any definition. Getting the job in the first case, by making the lawyer feel bad for ...
Ethics: The Big Questions , edit ed by James P. Sterba, 259 -275. Malden, Massachusets: Blackwel Publishers Ltd, 1998.
Ciulla, J. B., Martin, C. W., & Solomon, R. C. (2007). Is "The Social Responsibility of Business... to Increase Its Profits"? Social Responsibility and Stakeholder Theory. Honest work: a business ethics reader (pp. 217-253). New York: Oxford University Press.
First thing let us start with a little overview of what Milton Friedman exposed in his article. It seems that the whole point of his essay revolves around one basic statement which clearly says that the only social responsibility of business is to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long it stays within the rules of the game (Milton Friedman, the social responsibility of business is to increase profit).
Every business has a social responsibility toward society. That means to maximize positive affects and minimize negative affects on the society. Social responsibilities includes economic-to produce goods and services, that society needs at the price, that satisfy both-business and consumers, legal responsibility-laws that business must obey, ethical responsibilities-behaviors and activities that are expected of business by society, but are not codified in the law, philanthropic responsibilities-represent the company’s desire to give back to society (charietys, volunteering, sponsoring).
Ferrell, O. C., Fraedrich, J., & Ferrell, L. (2013). Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases: 2011 custom edition (9th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
The common consensus within the business field is that businesses have a social responsibility to protect and improve the societies they affect. Social responsibility is the belief that businesses and their employees have a duty to act in a manner that benefits their environments and society. The concept of social responsibility stems from ethics, which are simply the moral principles that guide a person’s behavior. However, despite this, it is clear to scholars, researchers, experts, and businessmen alike that sometimes ethics and responsibility are thrown out the window in favor of cutting costs and increasing corporate profits. This tendency for otherwise good businesses to act in badly is known as the Lucifer effect, and is a very real
The term “ethical business” is seen, by many people, as an oxymoron. This is because a business’s main objective is to make as much money as possible. Making the most money possible, however, can often lead to unethical actions. Companies like Enron, WorldCom, and Satyam have been the posterchildren for how corporations’ greed lead to unethical practices. In recent times however, companies have been accused of being unethical based on, not how they manage their finances, but on how they treat the society that they operate in. People have started to realize that the damage companies have been doing to the world around them is more impactful and far worse than any financial fraud that these companies might be engaging in. Events like the BP oil
To conclude business organizations do not have the right to deceive individuals and consumers in specific because Albert Carr’s claim that business is a game cannot be justifiable and supported with reasons that may harm or the community and its people. However, I do believe that business organizations should be socially responsible and that would help them maximize profits in the long run (Lauren, 2011)
Friedman, M. (1970). The Social Responsibility of Business is to make Profit. New York Times
Covey & Brown (2001) “the role of business in society has progressed over the years, from being primarily concerned with profit for sharehold¬ers to a stakeholder and community approach with a focus on corporate social responsibility”
The problem that was investigated consisted of a question that Milton Friedman posed in one of his articles, which was featured in The New York Times Magazine in 1970. The question was, “What does it mean to say that “business” has responsibilities” (Friedman, 2007, p. 173)? Friedman (1970) elaborated on how businesses cannot have assigned responsibilities. Furthermore, he described how groups or individuals should be the only ones that can hold responsibilities, not businesses. He stated that associating responsibilities with the word business is too ambiguous. I will examine three discussion questions and three compare and contrast questions which Jennings (2009) posed in a case study that is related to Friedman’s (1970) article “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”.
Shaw, W. & Barry, V. (2010). Moral issues in business (11th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage
When the problem became serious two main views formed: the “narrow” view and the “broader” view, based on different ideas. The “narrow” view is based on the proposition that corporations have no social responsibility and they have only one main purpose, to make a profit (Friedman, 1970). So corporations should remain socially independent and all conflicts must be solved through the individual responsibility concept. On the contrary the “broader” view states that corporations have social obligations as all existing participants of market, persons and entities are tied together and are mutually dependent. So corporations cannot ignore some serious events or problems, which take place, and must help society, as profit is not their single purpose.
A company has an economic obligation. It must earn a favorable return for its stockholders in the restrictions of the law. But, corporate social responsibility means that organizations have also ethical and societal responsibilities that go past their economic responsibilities. CSR needs organizations to develop their documentations of their responsibilities to include other stakeholders such as workers, customers, suppliers, local societies, state governments, international organizations, etc. Ethics could be seen as a fundamental component of individual and group activities at the heart of organizations’ errands.