La responsabilidad social y la responsabilidad limitada en Milton Friedman. De un modelo shareholder hacia un modelo stakeholder

Este artículo aborda las implicaciones de la responsabilidad limitada de las empresas en la doctrina de Milton Friedman acerca de la responsabilidad social corporativa y la obligación fiduciaria de los directivos con los shareholders. Desde que la responsabilidad limitada permite a las empresas privatizar sus beneficios mientras socializa sus pérdidas, atribuye ilegítimamente a los ejecutivos la capacidad de imponer impuestos. Esta atribución amenaza la propiedad privada y el intercambio voluntario, supuestos en los que Friedman basa su sistema. Por tanto, o Friedman rechaza la responsabilidad limitada o reconsidera estos supuestos, aceptando sus consecuencias. Basándonos en sus ideas libertarias, explicamos cómo la responsabilidad limitada modificaría el concepto de propiedad, obligando al directivo a incorporar el interés de todos los stakeholders en la dirección de la empresa, presentando el modelo stakeholder como la respuesta coherente y ética a la presencia de la responsabilidad limitada en las economías modernas.This paper discusses Milton Friedman’s vi ews about corporate social responsibility and limited liability. Since limited liability allows cor porations to privatize their gains while their losses can be socialized, it amounts to letting them tax other people illegitimately. This “taxation without representati on” seems to threaten two concepts that underlie Friedman’s shareholder mode l and his rejection of corporate social responsibility: private proper ty and voluntary exchange. Therefore Friedman should either reject limited liabilit y or he should reconsider thes e assumptions, accepting the consequences that would follow. Based on Friedman’s own libertarian ideas, we explain how limited li ability modifies his concept of ownership, incorporating the interests of stakeholders into the goals of managers as they run the firm. Finally, we argue that the stakeholder model would be the correct, as well as the ethical, response to limited liability in modern economies

'The Commanding Heights', o los sectores clave de la economía

Cuando Lenin acuñó en 1922 el término 'The Commanding Heights' para referirse a los sectores clave de cualquier economía, a las industrias estratégicas clave, no podía imaginar que el mundo seguiría debatiendo continuamente sobre ellos casi pasado un siglo

Corporate Social Responsibility and the Role of Managers. An Update of Friedmand´s Ideas

Friedman has been traditionally interpreted as the exponent of the shareholder theory. According to this theory, among the various actors associated with a business, shareholders have unrivaled primacy, and hence, corporations should be managed so as to maximize their value alone, within certain limits. However, by framing these ideas in his libertarian philosophy, we present a more accurate interpretation, especially of the clauses limiting the managers' actions. This interpretation, together with the developments in the concepts of profit, property, and the role playing by the corporate culture, legitimates the inclusion of social responsibility into the managers' agenda, even in the shareholder model.Friedman ha sido tradicionalmente considerado como el exponente de la teoría de los shareholders. De acuerdo a este modelo los accionistas tienen prioridad sobre el resto de los agentes implicados en la empresa, y por tanto los ejecutivos no tienen otra responsabilidad que maximizar el beneficio de los accionistas,si bien dentro de unos límites. En este artículo ofrecemosuna interpretación distinta al enmarcarsus ideas en su filosofía libertaria. La nueva perspectiva que adquieren las cláusulas que limitan la actuación de los directivosjunto con recientes tendencias en losconceptos de beneficio, propiedad, así como en el papel de la cultura corporativa en la empresa,legitimanla incorporación de la responsabilidad social en las agendas de los directivos, incluso en el restrictivo modelo shareholde

The Commanding Heights, o los sectores clave de la economía

Cuando Lenin acuñó en 1922 el término ‘the commanding heights’ para referirse a los sectores clave de cualquier economía, a las industrias estratégicas clave, no podía imaginar que el mundo seguiría debatiendo continuamente sobre ellos casi pasado un siglo

El liberalismo económico en el nuevo orden social

In the last decades globalization and the knowledge economy have caused socioeconomic and cultural changes, which have given rise to a new way of understanding politics. This way claims for different solutions to face the traditional conflict between State-individual, or planned economy-market economy. The route to go ahead is not a mid-road between socialism or capitalism, but to explore a new way where social agents could be complemented, and the civil society may have a prevailing role. The exam of the principal thesis of genuine liberalism, and its corollaries in economic policy recommendations, show how the liberal doctrine does not drive to that supposed incompatibilities.Los cambios culturales y socioeconómicos que se han gestado en las últimas décadas, fruto de la globalización y de la economía del conocimiento, han configurado un nuevo modo de comprender la actividad política, que reclama soluciones distintas al tradicional conflicto Estado-individuo, o economía planificada-economía de mercado. El camino a recorrer no consiste en una vía intermedia entre el socialismo y el capitalismo, sino en explorar una senda en la que se integren los agentes sociales de modo complementario, y en la que adquiera un papel preponderante la sociedad civil. La revisión de las tesis principales del genuino liberalismo, y sus corolarios en las recomendaciones de política económica, muestran cómo la doctrina liberal no conduce a esas pretendidas incompatibilidades

Las motivaciones transitivas y la naturaleza ética de los procesos productivos

La mayoría de los estudios éticos sobre la empresa han considerado la producción como un proceso predominantemente técnico y, por tanto, al margen de la ética. En este trabajo, por medio del análisis de tres características esenciales de la producción (utilidad, parcelación y exterioridad), examinaremos cómo la introducción de las motivaciones extrínsecas e intrínsecas en el pensamiento empresarial ha permitido superar parte del mecanicismo atribuido tradicionalmente a la producción. A continuación mostraremos cómo sólo a través de la motivación transitiva se logra devolver la dimensión ética al proceso productivo, ofreciendo un cauce para el enriquecimiento interior del trabajador y permitiendo a la empresa alcanzar la eficiencia ética

The Ethical Dimension of Industrial Production: the Role of Transitive Motivation

The ethical dimension of industrial production has been largely neglected by theorists of production. This article identifies three important features of the production process, i.e. utility, compartmentalization, and independent external end-point; brought about by industrialization in the development of the production of goods. We claim that a mechanistic understanding of these features gets in the way of an ethical approach to the topic. We analyze attempts to overcome such an understanding by appeal to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. This article concludes that this strategy is insufficient and that a comprehensive ethics of production only comes into view if we incorporate transitive motivation into the analysis

A Survey on Virtue in Business and Management (1980-2011)

Virtue ethics is generally recognized as one of the three major schools of ethics, but is often waylaid by utilitarianism and deontology in business and management literature. Focusing on publications in the Thomson-Reuters Journal of Citation Report between 1980 and 2011, we use EBSCO and ABI databases to look for articles containing the keywords 'virtue ethics', 'virtue theory' or 'virtuousness' in the abstract together with 'business' or 'management' in the text. We refined our search to draw lists of the most prolific authors, the most cited authors, the most cited articles and the journals with the most virtue ethics publications. This information allows us to chart how virtue ethics articles have evolved through the decades and establish clusters of authors as well as clusters of themes. These findings also provide a foundation for future study of the meanings of virtue ethics and the achievement and potential of different persuasions within virtue ethics research. We believe this will make a significant contribution to business ethics scholarship and management education by supplying both with a solid philosophical and anthropological mooring

Ethical Codes and Corporate Responsibility of the Most Admired Companies of the World: Towards a Third Generation Ethics?

Manuscript Type: Empirical. Research Question/ Issue: Codes of ethics contain a set of rules of conduct and corporate principles concerning the responsibility to stakeholders and shareholders, which help guide corporate and employees' behavior, and they constitute verifiable elements of social responsibility. Given the growing concern for social responsibility and for the relationship with external stakeholders, which has become an undeniable social demand, we think that the codes of the most respectable and admired companies should reflect this trend. This study looks into the Most Admired Companies of the World ranked by Fortune magazine in 2009 to find out if their codes of ethics exhibit greater emphasis on social responsibility and strong implementation processes, and whether they could be considered codes of the third generation. Stohl et al. (2009) suggest that the codes of ethics of the most advanced companies should evolve to the third generation ethics', which focuses on the long-term perspective and on the global, social and environmental aspects of corporate responsibility sensibility. Research Findings/Insight: Our results show that the codes of ethics of the 2009 Most Admired Companies of the World resemble codes of conduct rather than strictly codes of ethics or codes of corporate social responsibility. They are still governed by traditional norms related to immediate economic success, normative compliance, internal management and the pressing effects of their sector. Theoretical/Academic Implications: This study provides empirical support for the idea that the philosophy of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is scarcely present in the codes of the most reputable companies