Up until now, a lot of the focus about corporate responsibility has been that it's good for profits. The triple bottom line, we have been told, is good building sustainable returns.
But these claims are missing the point. A paper from Professor Bhanu Murthy from the Delhi School of Economics argues that business ethics and social responsibility are actually closely connected and that the link goes beyond questions of profit.
His paper, Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility – A New Perspective, says that business can no longer viewed as property that's just there to generate profits.
"There is a transformation in the nature of business. It cannot be continued to be viewed merely as a property. Internally there are many dimensions of society that reside in the business, for instance, diversity across cultures and communities prevail amongst the employees. Secondly, there is scope for discrimination at the work place as there could be in the society, in general. This way business becomes more and more a microcosm of society. Externally, it has been pointed out that the decline of the State has lead to a vacuum in the social space. Therefore, the social responsibility of business has grown."
The paper argues that corporate responsibility takes in three areas:
1. good governance
2. corporate social responsibility
3. environmental accountability.
What that means is that the behaviors inside the organisation and management perspectives need to change.
I am the author of this paper. It has appeared in the Top Ten List of Social Science Research Network Library (The biggest online library in the world) It was presented at an International Conference of ISO 26000, at New Delhi – 15-16 April 2007.