BUS320 Assessment Task 3

Around 2000 years ago Greek philosophers thought that “goodness” could be explained as a result of understanding the function or purpose of things. A racehorse metaphor was then used to exemplify this idea. The purpose of racehorses is to win races and therefore a good horse should be one that is speedy, agile and disciplined. If we were to apply a similar approach to corporations, what would it be that makes a corporation a good corporation?

For many the view postulating that the purpose of the corporation is to make a profit for shareholders is the correct view; this view has been associated with Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and his followers of the Economics School of Chicago. The alternative to Friedman’s view is the one proposed by Reverend Freeman (and others) in his “Stakeholder Management” essay in which he states that businesses should operate under ethical premises. Perhaps it is time to converge these theories into a synthesis approach by managing enterprises strategically and ethically at the same time.

The purpose of this report is to unpack this controversy. You will have to start by:

English for Academic Purpose

Reading the following articles:

Boatright, J.R., 2006. What’s wrong—and what’s right—with stakeholder management. Journal of Private Enterprise, 21(2), pp.106-130.

Freeman, R.E., Harrison, J.S. and Wicks, A.C., 2007. Managing for stakeholders: Survival, reputation, and success. Yale University Press.

Friedman, M., 2007. The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. Corporate ethics and corporate governance (pp. 173-178). Springer, Berlin Heidelberg.

Jensen, M.C., 2002. Value maximization, stakeholder theory, and the corporate objective function. Business ethics quarterly, 12(02), pp.235-256.

Assignment on Essay Writing

Then conduct your own research and respond to the requirements in the rubric table below.