Evaluate the social responsibility of Ben & Jerry's in a global economy

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Business Ethics, Corporate Ethics, grade: 1,8, Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh, language: English, abstract: The notion Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has provoked an extensive history of academic debate whether corporations have a social as well as financial responsibility to the community or not. The main conflict in this field has been associated with the evolution of the concept and the definition of CSR. Even though this concept has a long and varied history, which arose centuries ago, the formal writing on social responsibility, however, is mostly a product of the past 50 years. During that time, there have been many papers published by academics and business practitioners. Bowen (1953) marks the beginning of the modern period of literature and argued that centralised power of big corporations had influence on the lives of citizens, by company's actions and decisions. Davis (1960) became famous because he emphasised the correlation between social responsibility and business power and justified socially responsible business decision in light of a good chance of bringing long-run prosperity to the corporation. In arguing against CSR, Milton Friedman (1970) seems to be widely accredited. In fact, he does not dispute the validity of CSR, but rather argues that when these activities are carried out for reasons of self-interest, then they are merely profit-maximization under the cloak of CSR. He set fort...