| 摘要 | Big Business Day (April 17) proved to be the dud that its ill-assorted guard of sponsors invited—and richly deserved. Yet its ostensible concern about the role of the corporation in modern society remains to be dealt with, albeit in a more constructive way. In that spirit, let us consider the concept of “social responsibility” on the part of companies that supposedly—or so say the relatively responsible critics—concentrate too single-mindedly on maximizing profits.
How should the performance of business firms be evaluated? Brushing aside the theatrics of the Jane Fondas and Ralph Naders, we find striking similarities among the more serious scholars. That is, most academic writers on “social responsibility” view the corporation almost solely as an engine of income redistribution, as a community benefactor, as a mechanism for improving the “quality of life,” both on and off the job—in short, in terms of its contributions to specific social or eleemosynary objectives.
But perhaps I am trying to state the point too subtly. My concern is not with the notion of paying some attention to the social dimensions of the business firm but with our growing habit of treating these noneconomic factors as paramount, sometimes I suspect unwittingly. Thus, traditional economic or business functions are so frequently viewed as secondary, or taken so much for granted, that the basic business of business is ignored by those outside the corporation who are evaluating its behavior. (Still in my unsubtle mood, let me note that “profit maximization” is itself shorthand for much, much more—for job creation and increases in productivity, for meeting payrolls, distributing dividends, and paying taxes.)
Surely the social impacts of business merit attention. We care about the air we breathe, the water we drink, and how the quality of both are affected by the actions of others. But, as citizens of the society, we have a wider array of concerns—economic as well as noneconomic.
To illustrate the point being developed here, let us conjure up two companies of similar size (measured by assets and sales) and in the same industry (say, pharmaceuticals): one is Social Responsibility Inc. (SR Inc.) and the other, Profit Maximization Inc. (PM Inc.). Let us further postulate that both SR Inc. and PM Inc. are law-abiding corporate citizens. Both operate at levels of honesty and integrity at least equal to those of government agencies, college professors, and social activists.
SR Inc. is the type of firm that meets all of the textbook criteria for social responsibility and even elicits admiration from Ralph, Jane, et al. It regularly fulfills its affirmative action “targets”; it goes beyond that and maintains special training programs to accelerate the career development of each minority and female member of its work force. SR Inc. is also a bulwark of its local community, supporting generously a variety of activist “citizen” groups as well as the opera, the art museum, the ballet, the symphony, and Scouts, Boy, Girl, and Sea. SR Inc. prides itself on the safety of its work places (it has never received so much as a de minimus citation from OSHA) and of its products (there has never been a product recall in its history). In fact, the Sierra Club and the Friends of the Earth regularly use the company’s auditorium for their meetings, free of charge, of course (including the granola-nut cookies and all-natural apple cider).
Profit Maximization Inc., on the other hand, is a very different breed of cat. It refuses to take government contracts and so avoids any requirement for conducting an affirmative action program. Rather, it hires and promotes solely on what its personnel office describes as outstanding professional merit. PM Inc. rarely contributes to local charities. It also has been chided by OSHA for failing to post the required notices and for maintaining inadequate safety records. On occasion, some of its products have been recalled for adverse side effects, albeit of the nonfatal variety.
Ecologists consider PM Inc. to be unfriendly because it obeys EPA mandates only grudgingly and after exhausting all available administrative and judicial remedies. And, to complete the catalogue of venality, let us assume that, although the firms are of equal size, PM Inc.’s profits are double those of SR Inc.
Quite clearly, these two firms are at opposite ends of anybody’s scale of social responsibility. SR Inc. is a ten and PM Inc. is a zero. Well, almost anybody’s. Let us try to break new ground and go beyond the traditional notions of social responsibility. Let us, therefore, examine the economic functions of these two companies, remembering that both are producers of pharmaceutical products.
As it turns out, SR Inc. manufactures and markets an array of old-line, standard, tried-and-true prescription drugs used to treat routine ailments. This helps, of course, to account for its fine safety record, as well as its low profitability—and its slow growth in sales, employment, dividends, and taxes paid.
PM Inc., in contrast, concentrates on developing new medicines, especially those that can be used for curing major diseases not much responsive to traditional pharmaceuticals. PM Inc.’s work force of brilliant male WASP scientists constantly wins prizes for achieving a variety of scientific breakthroughs that result in lifesaving—and rapidly selling and highly profitable—new medicines. (The reader can readily think of similar contrasting examples in other industries, but the point need not be belabored.)
Now, until these two stereotypes are more fully fleshed out, some of us may be reluctant to state categorically that PM Inc. contributes more to the public welfare than SR Inc. But I, if pressed, surely would opt for PM Inc. By ignoring the merit of the “economic” functions of the business firm, most available analyses of corporate social responsibility are fundamentally flawed. At the least, they are inadequate to the extent that they implicitly assume that the act of producing and distributing food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities and amenities has little bearing on society’s welfare. PM Inc. should not be a zero on anybody’s scale of social responsibility.
To reduce the likelihood of being misunderstood, let me repeat the basic thesis of this article: the role and contribution of the business firm in modern society should not be viewed primarily in noneconomic terms. As an economic unit, if the business firm has any fundamental obligation to the society of which it is a part—aside from or even in contrast to its commitments to its shareholders—it is to produce those goods and services that consumers desire in order to enhance their welfare as they see it. Conventional notions of “social responsibility” should properly be viewed as constraints rather than basic goals to be aimed at.
The contributions of business to meeting other concerns of society are surely not trivial. But clearly they are ancillary. Perhaps we need to go a step further and point out that the business firm is not an all-purpose mechanism. It is an economic organization that was created for and is best suited to serve economic purposes—purposes, moreover, that are of vital importance to the health and welfare of the society.
The implications of all this may even be profound! To the extent that the basic role of the corporation is excluded from the analysis, the analyst will be led to question the “legitimacy” of the corporation and to conclude that society’s will must be more directly imposed on these private mechanisms. And the analyst will be misled. A comprehensive and balanced analysis is more likely to conclude that the business firm, warts and all, is a major bastion of our free and productive society. Thus, the proper response to Big Business Day may well be—”Free the Fortune 500!” ■
Murray L. Weidenbaum is J. E. Lundy visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, on leave from Washington University in St. Louis. |
