Social responsibility in this context exemplifies the ethical principles of beneficence, justice, and non-malfeasance. More specifically, examples of beneficent corporate responsibility would be the use of corporate profits to return a benefit back to the community from where those profits were made, such as through financial support of education and social services in the community (Stevens, 2008).
Examples of justice and non-malfeasance would include purposeful decisions to avoid profitable policies and procedures that are perfectly legal but that are also associated with greater harm to the community than policies and procedures that are somewhat less profitable but safer for the community (Halbert & Ingulli, 2008). Typical examples of corporate beneficence would include the use of company profits to fund welfare organizations, to promote education and health in the community, and to provide scholarships to disadvantaged youth in the local community (Halbert & Ingulli, 2008).
More global examples of corporate beneficence would include donating relief funds to foreign countries (Svensson & Wood, 2008). In the contemporary environment of modern business practices, the ethical principles of beneficence, justice, and non-malfeasance often apply jointly to the use of foreign labor. Specifically, during the latter decades of the 20th century, many American and other Western business organizations began outsourcing their factory work to foreign nations to capitalize on the much cheaper working wages in those countries. Numerous highly-publicized ethical violations came to light...
In principle, farming out labor to those nations to profit from the fact that children (and low-wage workers more generally) are exploited in a manner that has been expressly prohibited by law for generations in their home nations violates the ethical responsibility of beneficence, justice, and non-malfeasance. The same is true of corporate usurpation of local resources in foreign lands without compensation to the communities dependent on those resources.
References
Halbert, T. And Ingulli, E. (2008). Law & Ethics in the Business Environment.
Cincinnati: West Legal Studies.
Hursthouse, R. (2005). On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mihaly, M. "Moral Theory: The Fundamentals." Ethics & Behavior Vol. 17, No. 4;
(2007): 406-407.
Stevens, B. "Corporate Ethical Codes: Effective Instruments for Influencing Behavior."
Journal of Business Ethics Vol. 78, No. 4; (2008): 601-609.
Svensson, G. And…
