Reference no: EM132633405

In 1970, Milton Friedman argued that a corporation's primary goal and responsibility should be to maximize profits for its shareholders. As such, social responsibility should not be of concern to a corporation, Nor should money or other resources be allocated to CSR initiatives. However, John Elkington who founded a British consultancy called SustainAbility disagreed. He first coined the phrase, triple bottom line (TBL), in 1994. Elkington thought companies should focus on three different bottom lines, the three Ps, which represent a company's profit, planet, and people accounts. The first, profit, is the traditional measure of a company's financial profit. The second is the company's planet account, which indicates how environmentally responsible the company has been. The third is the measure of a company's people account, which is a measure of how socially responsible an organization has been with people both inside the organization (employees) and outside the organization (community). Elkington believed the only way a company could account for the full cost of doing business would be to consider all three.

Problem 1: Do you think a company should be concerned with social responsibility initiatives? Consider both the pros and cons.