The argument over the social responsibility of companies is a quagmire I generally avoid, as one side insists its a moral obligation for firms to support charitable causes and the other insists it's a violation of fiduciary responsibility that borders on embezzlement. But in the context of such an argument, I heard a phrase that stuck in my mind as having some objective merit:
The social responsibility of a company is to serve to its customers.
I'm keen on customer service in general, and had considered it to be important for more functional reasons (good customer service yields happy and loyal customers) - but the suggestion that good customer service is a moral imperative, and that providing it is related to the social responsibility of a firm, puts it in an entirely different context. The more I mull it over, the more it seems fundamentally right.
The most basic consideration of ethics is passive - it involves refraining from actions that cause collateral damage to other parties. That is, a person is free to pursue his own interests so long as he does not harm others by so doing. There is also a proactive consideration of ethics that indicates a person should (not "must") undertake actions that create benefits for others. Any firm that provides a product or service that people purchase is fulfilling the proactive consideration of ethics, and the fact the people are willing to pay for the product demonstrates proof that the firm has done exactly that.
I expect the opposition to that consideration is that companies do not fulfill their social responsibility is based on the receipt of payment. That is, a charity that provides a product to those who need it is ethical because it gives it away at no cost whereas a firm that sells a product to those who need it is unethical because it receives payment. I disagree with that - regardless of how the operation that provides the product is funded, a social good is rendered to the recipients of the product.
That is to say: nonprofit organizations must have funding for their operations, the same as a commercial organization - and if their operations are ongoing, they must have an ongoing source of funds to continually deliver a social benefit. They collect payment from a different party (donor) to deliver their product to the consumer (beneficiary) rather than charging the consumer directly.
At the risk of stepping into a political minefield, the same can be said of governments who deliver social benefits - though in this case, the funding is involuntary, and as such there is a reasonable basis for the argument that this immediately violates the primary "do no harm" requirement of ethics. I'll step briskly back from that, but it merits consideration when the topic turns to what government ought to "provide" for citizens, in the manner of a charity.
Back to the point: whether the expenses of providing a good are collected from the party that receives the good seems to be of little consequence to ethics. It may, however, have a great deal to do with the efficiency and effectiveness of an operation. In a commercial organization, the buyer and consumer are the same person, and that person is generally attentive to the exchange of values: if what he gets is not worth what he pays, he stops doing business with the company. The firm must therefore be highly attentive to the effectiveness of its products and the efficiency of its operations to ensure its survival. In a nonprofit organization, those who pay for a good and those who receive it are disconnected from one another - and as a result neither party generally considers, or is aware of, whether the good is worth its price, as one receives the good without paying and the there pays without receiving. This may do much to explain the notorious inefficiency and ineffectiveness of nonprofit operations.
Shifting back to the operations of a firm: a company that provides a good or service that addresses a customer's needs at a price that customer is willing to pay has benefitted that individual. If it has 500 customers, it has benefitted 500 members of society. And if it has 500 million customers, it has benefitted 500 million members of society. Apologies for the tedium, but this is leading up to the question: at what point do we drop the "members of" and simply state that a company has benefitted society?
That question is rhetorical, but it seems to me that there are those who would spend too much time considering it: ethics is generally not subjected to the calculation of a critical mass (though ethical violations may be assessed by the number of individuals harmed). The same question would likely not be raised in terms of a charitable undertaking: a charitable organization raising funds for the medical treatment of one person is still ethical, even though it does not provide for all or even of a majority of people in the same condition.
Likely I've strayed a bit far afield at this point ... my original consideration was that a company that serves its customers, and does nothing else at all, is acting in a manner that satisfies the imperatives of ethics in regard to social responsibility.
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