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Ethical Perspectives: Friedman vs. Drucker, Murphy

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Ethical Perspectives: Friedman vs. Drucker, Murphy In this paper we will be comparing and contrasting ethical perspectives on business ethics of Milton Friedman, Patrick Murphy, and Peter Drucker. Their methods are drastically different, but the goal is to explain and better understand “business ethics” in today’s world.

Milton Friedman

“A corporation is an artificial person and in this sense may have artificial responsibilities, but ‘business’ as a whole cannot be said to have responsibilities, even in this vague sense.” (Friedman, 1970). M. Friedman believes that only the individual has social responsibilities. Business as an artificial entity cannot have “social conscience” and think of ethics before its interests or profits.
According to Friedman, the primary responsibility of a businessman is to make happy the business owner with profits, and the primary task for the business owner is to make sure there are enough profits to:
a. Sustain the business
b. Have a stable growth
c. Have the ability and means to compete on the market
d. Keep happy the parties involved: customers, stockholders and investors.
(Friedman, 1970). Furthermore, Friedman discusses the relationship between “social responsibilities of a business” and “socialism” and stresses the idea that if a business or a large corporation is forced to perform its “social responsibility”, example donate a large amount of money to social programs or local schools, business acts irresponsibly towards its:
a. Customers, because the cost of its “social responsibility” will be imposed as a tax on them and it will increase the final price of the product or provided services.

b. Stockholders. The only reason stockholders elect a CEO is to secure their interests and investments into that specific market. If the CEO or any other person in senior management desirers to perform a charitable

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