The social responsibility of engineers - Essay Example

Can a business really have responsibilities? It is only people who can be said to be either responsible or irresponsible. If a corporation is viewed as an artificial person, then it follows that its responsibilities are also artificial. Therefore we conclude that businessmen are the ones who should be responsible. Therefore when saying that businesses should have a social responsibility, implies that the corporate executives running these businesses are the ones to take up responsibility. Even if a corporate executive is an employee of the business owners, he still has direct responsibilities of running the business (Friedman).

A businessman is said to be socially responsible if he/she were to act in a way that does not necessarily interest his/her employers. For example, a corporate executive may refrain to increase the price of certain products out of concern that doing this might lead to inflation. Such action could be contrary to the best interests of the corporation. The corporate executive could hire less qualified personnel in order to contribute to poverty reduction. In each of the mentioned cases, the business man would be spending either the employer’s or the customers’ money for a general social interest.

His actions would therefore be evidence of social responsibility. If a businessman were to spend the stockholders’ or the customers’ money in a different way from that of his customers, he would be in effect imposing taxes on them. This process may lead to political questions since it is the work of the government to impose taxes and plan expenditures (Friedman). Social responsibility has its consequences. Let us take inflation for example, what if a businessman was told that he has to contribute in fighting inflation, what actions would he take?

Lowering the price of the products could lead to a great financial loss. Reducing the rate of production would lead to shortages and if were to reduce the employees’ wages, these would