Abstract
Authors of books on business ethics and corporate social responsibility fall into two general approaches when they answer the question: ‘Why should a business firm, which represents private property, have greater obligations to the local community than an ordinary citizen?’ Authors generally subscribe to a ‘rights’ approach or to a ‘power’ model. This paper will present four rights approaches and three power models which are used to describe the relationship of the firm to society. Introducing these different approaches and models will be two brief expositions which provide the setting for determining the relationship of a firm to society. The first traces two lines to the development of the contemporary American corporation. The second views the business corporation as a quasi-public institution.
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Thomas F. McMahon, C.S.V., is Director at the Loyola Center for Values in Business, Loyola University of Chicago. He presently holds a post as Director of the Loyola Center for Values in Business. He is professor of Socio-Legal Studies. His most important publications are Report on the Teaching of Business Ethics (University of Virginia, 1975), The Brewer-Wholesaler Relationship (Cambridge Center for Social Studies, 1968) and ‘The Moral Aspects of Power’, in Power and the Word of God (Concilium, 1973).
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McMahon, T.F. Models of the relationship of the firm to society. J Bus Ethics 5, 181–191 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00383624
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00383624