The Changing Nature of Business Responsibilities

Abstract

Joseph W. McGuire, Ph.D., is Dean of thE College of Commerce and Administration and Professor of Industrial Administration at the University of Illinois. Prior to going to Illinois at the beginning of this academic year, Dr. McGuire was Dean of the School of and Professor of Administration and Economics at the University of Kansas. His earlier teaching experience included service at CarnegieMellon University, University of Hawaii, University of Washington, and the Netherlands College of Economics in Rotterdam. Dean McGuire's book Business and Society (McGraw-Hill Book Co.) was voted the McKinsey Award by the Academy of Management as among the five best books in published in 1963. In 1965 he also received the McKinsey Award for the best article in Horizons. This paper was presented at the 1968 Annual Meptinor nf A.R. T A tinued unabated. The concentration of many in the population upon productivity and its rewards has resulted in an astonishing national affluency. Yet, the perplexing question raised by Huxley remains to nag uneasily at us: What are we going to do with all these things? The bigness of our institutions has not, perhaps, solved as many problems as their very size has raised. Nor has the growth in national wealth resulted in a nationwide aura of contentment and smug satisfaction. Quite the contrary: In the midst of affluency there exists poverty, racial discrimination, unbreathable air and undrinkable water, and all the other abominations that afflict our modem life. We have our things then, including some that we do not want. As Huxley implied almost 100 years ago, Americans have rather uniquely concentrated on the process of acquisition and have tended to neglect almost completely the process of disposal-which most men have regarded as a feminine or childish preoccupation. In brief, the American male has been guided almost exclusively by a business ethic. Acquisition has long been reinforced by a Protestantism which reconciles material and spiritual values. It has been supported by the so-called American Dream, which offers unlimited opportunities to those who work hard and are frugal. And it has been encouraged by the classical economic philosophy which promises that utopia will result if only men pursue their unfettered self-interest. Finally, it has been abetted by a crackerjack of a societal