International Journal of Business, Management and Commerce (IJBMC)

There has been a heightened public interest in the concept and meaning of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in recent years, because of the symbiotic relationship between society and business, and because of the concern about the role of business people in a capitalist society. This heightened public interest was probably an outcome of business people amassing so much wealth and “power” that enabled them to influence the lives of millions of people. The concerns were exacerbated by reports of fraudulent business activities and unacceptable accounting irregularities that shocked the capitalist market economy to its core, and the public sought protection. The question that practitioners, ethicists and scholars have asked was about the role of business in society vis-à-vis the “triple bottom line.” Corporate social responsibility has evolved as a voluntary initiative to hold business people socially responsible for their management decisions and business activities, and to make them accountable (pay) for the consequences of those decisions and actions on society and the environment. The paper discusses the symbiotic relationship between society and business, revisits Friedman‟s doctrine, and argues for the ethics of corporate social responsibility that “doing good” is morally good and ancillary to “doing well.”