アメリカにおける企業の社会的責任の歴史的考察

Abstract

In U. S. A., the big business organization is the most prominent and powerful institution. In fact, big business is so strong that every American feels its influence in everyday life. Also big business itself knows quite well its behavior is observed by public. Accordingly, it has become fashionable for many business leaders to advocate “the social responsibility of business”. However, there is no agreement on a definition or concept of corporate social responsibilities. No one argues that management does not have a direct responsibility to stockholders, or that the corporation is not interested in profits. Debate arises over priorities of obligation to stockholders, workers, and consumers. Should a corporation concern itself with things such as racial porblems, unemployment, city problems (slum or urban ugliness), pollution of water and air, cultural deserts, political life and so on ?For example, Milton Freedman argues that the single task of managers is to employ the capital of their stockholders in the most profitable manner for the benefit of stockholders and not in the service of some public interest ; his main point of view is based on the classical allocation theory that price and marginal cost will tend to be roughly equal, rewards to the factors of production will relate to their respective marginal contribution to production, and resources will be used in the most efficient manner. For him, retaining the competitive market system. insisting on the importance of the profit motive, and giving the generous rein to supply and demand mean greater production.On the other hand, G. K. Galbraith points out that the assumption of classical price theory has lost most of its validity in mid-twentieth century since the modern American capitalist system depends on and revolves around the operations of a relatively few large corporations. That is to say, competition within the system of corporate concentrates produces results quite different from the balanced economy expounded by Adam Smith.However, if we look at historical movements of corporate social responsibilities in U. S. A., we will realize that there has been a great diversity of reactions from business toward them. Eventually, we recognize that any of these arguments on the above discusses only about one aspect of the corporate social responsibility and gives us no definite answer. But if we consider the corporate organization as an open system and also the society as a total open system including a production subsystem, political subsystem, and so on, we will possibly get better explanations on the debate and why American corporations have been extending their range of social responsibilities in a historical process of the growth of the American industry.In this paper, I will discuss why using the open system theory approach can be useful for analysing historical movements of the corporate social responsibility and show an applicability of the theory by analysing three cases in each different phase of the American business history.