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Corporate Power and Responsibility$
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J. E. Parkinson

Print publication date: 1995

Print ISBN-13: 9780198259893

Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2012

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198259893.001.0001

An Evaluation of Profit-Sacrificing Social Responsibility

Chapter:
(p. 304 ) 10 An Evaluation of Profit-Sacrificing Social Responsibility
Source:
Corporate Power and Responsibility
Author(s):

J. E. Parkinson

Publisher:
Oxford University Press
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198259893.003.0026

This chapter discusses whether the public interest would be better served if companies moderated profits in favour of social policy objectives. It also addresses some examples of profit-sacrificing social responsibility. It begins by exploring the validity of three groups of criticisms, namely the efficiency argument, the deference argument, and the shareholders' money argument. It also assesses the adoption of other-regarding constraints in the light of them, and similarly, the practice of social activism. It then explains how the concept of social responsibility should be understood if progress is to be made in establishing a legal framework conducive to improved standards of corporate behaviour. It is concluded that not only did responsibility in the sense of building in additional constraints or self-regulation survive the various arguments against it, but that there was a positive case for it, as a means of supplementing external regulation.

Keywords:   profit-sacrificing social responsibility, social policy, company, social activism, efficiency argument, deference argument, shareholders' money argument

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