Friendman's important cultural values are:
- Collectivism- he continually mentions that the executive has a duty to the people in the business: the owners, stockholders and employees. This is a very closed view of collectivism, Friendman believes in taking care of ones own (the people within the corporation), not necessarily everyone else (society).
- Individualism- Friendman speaks about how the reason why the executive should not support social goals is to protect oneself from being fired from higher powers. He writes that in a private competitive enterprises, people are responsible for their actions and thus need to look out for themselves, not the collective society.
- Monochronic Time- I know that he did not say much if anything about time but he does seem like the kind of person who would be very diligent about time.
- Stability, Tradition and Risk Aversion- Friendman obviously is not for going with the shift in the American economic market that is trending towards a more socially aware business; he is doing this because of the risk of both the business failing and of the self, the worry of being fired due to spending business funds.
- Directness- the article is incredibly blunt; Friendman calls some of his fellow businessmen borderline schizophrenic. He wants to get his point across, and he takes a very blunt approach to doing so.
However, I think that in this short run argument, if the company is founded on the principles of social responsibility, then it would be a different story. Like in the example of how hospitals' main goals are to provide a service, this business would have two goals: making money and helping others. Then I believe that the executive would be irresponsibly using funds if he or she didn't help socially.
Now, that is in the short run, in the long run I see no conflict with the so-called dichotomy of profit and social responsibility. Being environmentally responsible helps our natural resources be of a higher quality; if all of our cotton farms are poisoned with waste from a factory, that will be bad in the long run economic scheme. Hiring the chronically unemployed helps in the long run because it makes a more efficient use of our labor resources, these people become workable again and are able to learn new skills while employed that help us in the future. The list like this goes on for a while; helping others will in turn help ourselves in the future.
When people like Friedman do not look into the future and only current profit, they of course will come to the above mentioned conclusions. This present-viewing mindset seems to be a rather pervasive mindset in America today. I personally believe that a shift towards a more future-viewing one will be necessary in order for our society to advance economically.
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