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September 25, 2025
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“Greed is good,” Milton Friedman argued in his New York Times essay that gave rise to corporate social responsibility. Michael Eisner wrote in a 1991 Walt Disney Company memo, “In order to make money, we must always make entertaining movies, and if we make entertaining movies, at times we will reliably make history, art, a statement, or all three.”
CSR has been a guiding ethic principle for many companies for over 50 years. Businesses that aspire to do and look good consistently promote their responsibility practices, strategies, and goals. Has this built a structure for responsibility and ownership? How can this evolve into a more sustainable future?
Read more about top publications’ speculation below.
Nadia Reckmann writes for Business News Daily that companies that do more than create profit for shareholders have a better standing with the public. But what is it, and why is it important for businesses?
“Corporate social responsibility is a type of business self-regulation with the aim of social accountability and making a positive impact on society.”
CSR is a way for companies to give back to communities and ensure that their business practices are not only profitable but also ethical and necessary for a greater goal. Some of the most common ways to give back are environmental programs, regardless of the company’s business; ethical labor practices such as diversity, equality, and inclusion in the workplace; and volunteering or philanthropy.
Companies rarely do good just for the sake of it; if that were the case, there wouldn’t be certain legal requirements they need to comply with. Still, going above and beyond the bare minimum is something that a lot of businesses aim for, especially since there are many benefits to that. So, what are some of these benefits? Brand perception is crucial as consumers tend to favor companies that have similar values to theirs. Besides, more people want to work for good companies, especially if they are Gen Z, increasing the attraction and retention of top talent. The third point is that appealing to investors is necessary for long-term growth, which CSR helps by laying out such plans.
How can Corporate social responsibility (CSR), a strategy that many businesses have adopted since Milton Friedman presented it in an essay for the New York Times in 1970, be brought into the 2020s? Does it need a revamp? According to Forbes’ Jeffrey Bertel, it does.
Four principles have guided CSR for the last 50 years: economic profitability, legality, ethics, and environmentalism. Profitability has reigned king ever since its inception, as companies prioritize economic growth, with obeying the law as a second tier, business ethics as third, and last but not least, making a positive impact through local contributions. This would all be well and good, considering Archie B. Carroll’s pyramid of social responsibility, but this isn’t what governments and the public want from companies in modern times.
Currently, there is a demand for splitting the bottom line into three: people, profit, and planet.
“When ethics inform everything else up the pyramid, businesses create more consistent approaches to modern CSR, from profits to corporate environmentalism.”
It shouldn’t be surprising that a leading question currently being answered is “How is corporate social responsibility related to ethics?” Bertel points out that business ethics, more commonly than not, have nothing to do with corporate responsibility. As it stands, CSR has the business profits as the main goal, while ethics is all about doing the right thing. A company that always has ethics as its main goal wouldn’t have a need for a company social responsibility program.
In her article for Fortune, Jane Hoffman points out inherent flaws in corporate social responsibility (CSR). She points out that the historic definition now comes up short as global politics heat up. As much as companies try to “give back” to communities, they can’t catch up with what they take.
“Greenwashing, pinkwashing,” and other -washings are mentioned as one big problem. This happens when companies promote “flashy yet hollow” actions towards a particular goal, in these cases, sustainability and ecological methods, and feminism. Think of it this way, having a “zero emissions” product that’s hard to come by or has a bigger price tag, thus a smaller percentage of sales, does not offset the real emissions from the majority of products or services offered.
“In some of our largest industries, CSR programs are far outpaced by the societal harms at the core of their businesses. That’s why we must revamp the CSR concept to emphasize the necessary scope of companies’ obligations.”
Hoffman proposes changing the mentality from “responsibility” to “accountability.” Corporate accountability would mean that companies are obligated and liable to answer for their actions as members of society rather than outsiders. She points out that some companies have begun enacting this change, citing Ben & Jerry’s and Patagonia’s efforts.
With the usual change that time brings, company social responsibility should evolve, too, to reflect the ethics of today and tomorrow. Social responsibility is of paramount importance as we cannot pretend that corporate profit doesn’t come at a societal and environmental cost. Companies have committed themselves to this concept for more than 50 years, but they have also been caught lying by omission or misleading people into believing that they are doing more than they should. This should be rectified, corporate accountability seems to be a good first step towards closing the gap, and some companies have even taken that first step all by themselves.
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