Comparing Views on Business Ethics: Milton Friedman and John Hook

Business is generally an economic system that services and products are exchanged for money. It composes the basis of contemporary world. Therefore, there is variety of definitions of how business should be. Milton Friedman and John Hook, who are the related with business academically, also defined business from the point of ethic. In this essay, I will determine similarities and differences between their articles about business ethics.

According to Milton Friedman the doctrine of "social responsibility" in business is just a result of the political mechanism. By saying "there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules

of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud." Friedman emphasize that social responsibility is completely unnecessary for business. However he thinks that the situation is completely different for the individual proprietor. Because when they implements "social responsibility", they are spending their own money, not company’s money.

In spite of Milton Friedman’s ideas about ethics, John Hooker expresses his ideas about why business managers should study ethics by saying “ Business management is all about making the right decisions.

Ethics is all about making the right decisions. Management is concerned with how decisions affect the company, while ethics is concerned about how decisions affect everything. Management operates in the specialized context of the firm, while ethics operates in the general context of the world. Management is therefore part of ethics. A business manager cannot make the right decisions without understanding management in particular as well as ethics in general. Business ethics is management carried out in the real world.”

Both Milton Friedman’s and John Hook’s primary purpose is persuading the audience. However, while John Hook tries to convince audience that ethics are necessary for business, Milton Friedman tries to induce them to that one and only purpose of business is to increase and maximize profits.

The writers are mainly targeting the academic community, which are interest in economy. They are also targeting the International general public, because texts are written in an accessible style with some specialist terminology and a all the cultural references in the text are well known all over the world. Both Milton Friedman’s and John Hook’s text are subjective because they are trying the persuade audience with regard to their own ideas toward to business and their ideas completely different from each

other.