The Social Responsibility of Businesses. The Example of Zalando (PDF)

Essay from the year 2020 in the subject Business economics - Business Ethics, Corporate Ethics, grade: 1,3, University of Applied Sciences Berlin, language: English, abstract: The aim of this paper is to show to what extent companies have an interest in social engagement and whether this actually conflicts with the pursuit of profit maximization.

"There is one and only one social responsibility of business-to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."

This quote comes from the American economist and later Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, with his statement he limited the responsibility of the company to only one function, the profit maximization. For Friedman, the social commitment of a company contradicted the goal of every economic company to maximize profits. From his point of view, corporate social responsibility meant that companies act fairly towards their stakeholders on the free market. This raises the question of the extent to which companies have scope to implement Corporate Social Responsibility measures and to what extent these measures and their effects can be evaluated.