Tribute to Milton Friedman

Together with Thomas Taussi, we wrote a short critical appraisal of Milton Friedman's 1970 classic "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits." It's one of the most influential writings on corporate social responsibility alongside R. Edward Freeman, A. B. Carroll, etc.

Although CSR research has made progress since Friedman's writing, there are still multiple issues that are yet to be incorporated into CSR's corpus. Friedman's original article is full of insights that have not been researched in great detail and require more in-depth analysis, e.g., Friedman was very well aware of "stakeholders." Still, stakeholderism is a very different kind of mindset than just perceiving corporations as embedded in the social fabric.

Friedman was also understandably worried about CSR's politicization and its possible effects on society as a whole. He understood that mechanisms for rent-seeking via CSR are there, and they might have undesirable effects in the long run. Friedman was pretty forward-looking in his analysis; CSR could be effectively "weaponized" to wage different forms of "activism" to force corporations to act in ways that activists don't effectively have any skin-in-the-game.

Check out our article, and remember to read Friedman's article too.