After reading the articles by Milton Friedman, R. Edward Freeman, Jon Entine and Marianne M. Jennings I have come to the conclusion that all deem it favorable for organizations to “devote resources to providing amenities”(pg 94) for the community in which the organization resides. Freeman’s views are characteristic to the old saying ‘pat my back and I’ll pat your back’ meaning that an organization must contribute to the overall well-being of a community for the community to support the organization. “The local community grants the firm the right to build facilities and, in turn, benefits from the tax base and economic and social contribution of the firm.” (Jennings, 2012, p. 100) Friedman only advocates social responsibility if it “(a) makes it difficult to recruit and retain employees; or (b) offers the prospect of adverse publicity or litigation that diminishes its ability to compete” (Jennings, 2012, p. 102-103). Entine and Jennings mention that “business and business ethics are much more complex than the breeziness of social responsibility” (Jennings, 2012, p. 102), so Entine and Jennings are on the same page with Friedman that the social responsibilities need to be monitored closely. It appears that Entine and Jennings feel that businesses can get too carried away with helping the community to the point where the organization will suffer because they have been blinded to the health of the organization by ‘beefing up’ the communities health. If an organization is not careful they will give away all of their profitable resources and this will in turn hurt the employees of the organization which will also contribute to the downfall in the health of the community. Organizations and communities need each other in order to maintain a healthy presence. Organizations have the free will to the extent it will help the community and while helping the community will help their organization helping the community too much will harm both the community and the organization. Entine and Jennings are correct when they say that social responsibility is a very complex portion of an organizations survival, it has to be approached with statistics and careful planning in order to create benefits for the organization and community alike.
References
Jennings, M. (2012). Business ethics: Case studies and selected readings. Australia: South-Western, Cengage Learning.
Ethical McCammon 