The argument that Milton Friedman and others use is that business has no business dealing with social issues-let ’em stick to business. It’s a nice position for a conceptual ostrich who doesn’t know what’s going on in the world and is enamored with economic theory. Show me an economist who will argue that social decisions have no economic consequences! No economist will argue that, so how can anyone argue that economic decisions have no social consequences? And if we train managers to ignore the social consequences, what kind of a society do we end up with? According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whom I quote in the book, we end up with one that rests on the letter of the law, and that’s a pretty deadly society. I’m not saying that businesspeople should take the place of politicians to decide social issues, but they have to be managing with a sensitivity to the social impact of their decisions.
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