Milton Friedman, who died in 2006, has been widely regarded as the foremost free-market economist of the post-war era. One of Friedman’s often quoted sayings (paraphrased) is that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game. That is that the role of business is to engage in open and free competition without deception or fraud. Writing in The New York Times Magazine in September 1970 on the theme of social responsibility, Freidman made clear his view that ‘businessmen who talk this way (referring to corporate social responsibility) are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades’. He was firmly of the view that a business, being an artificial construct, could not have views on social responsibility. Freidman, if he were alive today would probably not change his viewpoint but would accept that transparency and engagement by managers and executives with their shareholders on matters of social responsibility was acceptable. After all, shareholders continue to have the right to liquidate their investment in one organisation and transfer their funds to another.
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