a young newspaper reporter and has been writing for almost six months on malpractices by business enterprises including such issues as misleading advertisements, supply of adulterated products, poor working conditions, environmental pollution, bribing government officials, and so on. He has started believing that business people tend to do anything to mint money. He happens to take an interview of Mr. Raman Jhunjhunwala, chairman of a leading truck manufacturing company which is known for its fair dealing with customers, employees, investors as well as other social groups.
Through this interview, Mani develops the understanding that it is possible for a business enterprise to be socially responsible and ethically upright and, at the same time, be highly profitable. He then gets busy with studying more about the social responsibility of business and business ethics. responsible business, and indeed any responsible member of society, must act with due concern for the effects on the lives of other people. In this sense, social responsibility is broader than legal responsibility of business.
Legal responsibility may be fulfilled by mere compliance with the law. Social responsibility is more than that. It is a firm’s recognition of social obligations even though not covered by law, along with the obligations laid down by law. In other words, social responsibility involves an element of voluntary action on the part of business people for the benefit of society.
. N EED FOR S OCIAL R ESPONSIBILITY What is the right thing to do when it comes to social responsibility? Should a business enterprise be run for the benefit of its owners who may desire to get as much profit as is possible or else, it needs to be responsible for serving the interest of other sections of society such as customers, employees, suppliers, government and community? The very concept of social responsibility implies that it is essentially an ethical issue, since it involves the question of what is morally right or wrong in relation to the firm’s responsibilities.
Social responsibility also has an element of voluntary action on the part of the business person who may feel free to