Abstract
This article about the social responsibility of the large corporation is not a paper about stewardship in general. If it were, it would have to focus primarily on the principle of long-term market accountability and the related principle of fidelity to long-term stockholder interests. Most of management's stewardship responsibilities can be subsumed under those two principles.
This paper will deal with areas in which those two principles alone are not adequate to define management's stewardship responsibilities. These areas of social accountability occur chiefly where the interests of employees or the general public are at stake — where their human and social purposes sometimes collide with the more limited commercial purposes of the large corporation.
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Elmer W. Johnson is currently Group Vice President for Operating Staffs and General Counsel at General Motors. He left the private practice of law in Chicago to join General Motors.
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Johnson, E.W. General motors corporation, its constituencies and the public interest. J Bus Ethics 5, 173–176 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00383622
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00383622