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I APPEAR BEFORE YOU AS THE spokesman for a minority view: I am a black sheep among the flock. There is today a general consensus, both within the business world and outside it, that businesses should pursue 'corporate citizenship' and 'sustainable development' in the name of 'corporate social responsibility' (CSR). I am not part of that consensus.
I believe that businesses should indeed act responsibly, and should be seen to do so. But I do not believe that responsible behaviour today need mean, or ought to mean, endorsing the current doctrine of CSR. I believe that the doctrine is wrong in what it says about the world and that putting it into effect would do harm.
The true role of business
Before explaining why I am against CSR, I would like to put before you some positive thoughts about the role and contribution of business enterprises in a market economy. In relation to that role and contribution, I offer you five propositions.
Let me start with a question. What is the purpose, the justification, for profit-oriented enterprises? How do businesses such as yours contribute to the general welfare?
My answer to that question is based on the past historical record of extraordinary economic progress-particularly, though by no means only, over the past 50-60 years. I believe that this story of progress is, to a large extent, a story of business achievement. Hence my Proposition One:
The principal direct impulse to economic progress comes from profit-related activities and initiatives on the part of business enterprises.
This is true of countries everywhere, past and present, rich and poor. The justification, the primary role, of private business is to act as a vehicle for economic progress.
How can one account for this positive business role? Here is my answer and my Proposition Two:
The business contribution to economic progress and the general welfare results from twin stimuli which only a market economy provides: wide-ranging entrepreneurial opportunities and pervasive competitive pressures. The two aspects go together.
This leads on to Proposition Three:
The role of business enterprises as vehicles of economic progress is linked, now as in the past, with 'capitalism', private ownership and profit-directed activity.
. . . and then to Proposition Four:
In a competitive market economy,...