Role of Business in Society
12:30 Seminar
Businesses influence our economy, culture, and public policy as they interact globally in a society with diverse values and pluralistic interests. Lifestyles become business opportunities. Corporations seek to influence our public policy and corporate behavior is related to most social issues of our time. Business has been charged with the mortgage crisis, polluting our water supply, contributing global warming, outsourcing production to overseas sweatshops with bad working conditions, and producing unsafe products. What is the social and ethical responsibility of business in these situations and how do issues like these get resolved? How do interest groups engage in the public policy process to influence business behavior? How can society control business to assure social needs are met to achieve a good society? Can managers make good decisions effecting stockholders, and groups with conflicting and competing interests for the common good of society?