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Today’s modern, Canadian, business corporations are hugely influential in determining public policy and many aspects of people’s lives. Because this influence permeates so much of our social construct, we expect corporations to act in an ethical manner. Yet, at the very baseline of legal incorporation, there is not a requirement for corporations, per se, to be ethical or to act in an ethical manner. This situation has set up a form of ethical dualism, with individual citizens being required to act in certain prescribed manners, while corporations, which in most cases comprise individual citizens, are allowed to ignore or even to flaunt similar ethical rules and standards. In this investigative paper on corporate applied ethics, I will examine arguments for and against the notion of including ethical responsibility statements within the concept of incorporation. This paper will provide a historical framework in which to view some of the complexities involved, and examine certain influential assertions made by Milton Friedman. The paper will begin with a look at what is meant by corporation in this context. This will be followed by an analysis of the arguments put forward by Milton Friedman in his famous essay “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits” and other related arguments. These other arguments, as objections to the inclusion of ethics within the notion of corporation, fall into three main types: objections to concept; to ability; and to process. I will review each in turn, with the hope that, by dispelling the Friedmanian arguments against corporate ethical inclusion, a new baseline for incorporation might be established. The second part of the paper will examine what kind of ethics might best suit the corporation. It will also consider ethical growth with respect to business. The paper will conclude with a suggestion as to how the inclusion of ethics within the notion of incorporation might be accomplished.

Today’s modern, Canadian, business corporations are hugely influential in determining public policy and many aspects of people’s lives. Because this influence permeates so much of our social construct, we expect corporations to act in an ethical manner. Yet, at the very baseline of legal incorporation, there is not a requirement for corporations, per se, to be ethical or to act in an ethical manner. This situation has set up a form of ethical dualism, with individual citizens being required to act in certain prescribed manners, while corporations, which in most cases comprise individual citizens, are allowed to ignore or even to flaunt similar ethical rules and standards. In this investigative paper on corporate applied ethics, I will examine arguments for and against the notion of including ethical responsibility statements within the concept of incorporation. This paper will provide a historical framework in which to view some of the complexities involved, and examine certain influential assertions made by Milton Friedman. The paper will begin with a look at what is meant by corporation in this context. This will be followed by an analysis of the arguments put forward by Milton Friedman in his famous essay “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits” and other related arguments. These other arguments, as objections to the inclusion of ethics within the notion of corporation, fall into three main types: objections to concept; to ability; and to process. I will review each in turn, with the hope that, by dispelling the Friedmanian arguments against corporate ethical inclusion, a new baseline for incorporation might be established. The second part of the paper will examine what kind of ethics might best suit the corporation. It will also consider ethical growth with respect to business. The paper will conclude with a suggestion as to how the inclusion of ethics within the notion of incorporation might be accomplished.

Thesis (doctoral)--Göteborg universitet. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [237]-241].

This paper focuses on the consumer expenditure habits in the years following the 2008 recession as compared to Milton Freidman’s Permanent Income Hypothesis. Panel data collected at the household level from the Consumer Expenditure Survey was used to analyze the change in consumption based on the change in income for the years 2009, 2010 and 2011. To achieve a greater understanding of expenditure patterns, this essay also analyzes the income elasticity of demand for elastic goods including expenditure on apparel, food eaten at restaurants, entertainment and transportation. With the use of panel and time series regressions we find that the Permanent Income Hypothesis holds true and consumers only marginally responded to a change in income in their consumption patterns. We hypothesize that the large spike in savings that was seen in May of 2008 resulted because of low consumer confidence, which in turn lead to a change in transitory consumption. Furthermore, we find that older adults spent more money on elastic goods than younger adults. This may be because older adults tend to have other assets that can financially support them in the case of a drastic change in income.

The prevalence of corporate social responsibility has been continually increasing over recent years. The debate of whether a business should act in a manner that furthers societal needs or if they should simply focus their efforts on maximizing shareholder value is of popular interest since it affects the fundamental structures of how a business will operate. One of the major influencing theories in favor of social responsibility is the stakeholder theory. The opposing viewpoint is the shareholder theory, which highlights that the sole responsibility for a corporation is to act in a way that maximizes profits. This thesis will outline the stakeholder and shareholder theories to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the debate and then offer a critical and philosophical analysis of shareholder theory to ultimately argue why the moral significance of a promise better promotes maximizing shareholder value.

The thesis deals with significant moments in the relationship between methodology of economics and implications of the financial crisis culminating in 2008 and 2009. Its key insight rests upon the claim that some theoretical concepts developed within mainstream economics do not tackle the reality adequately and contributed in a significant way to the sequence of events leading to the financial crisis. Most of those concepts were introduced in the second half of the 20th century, during a "high tide" of positivistic ideas in the domain of methodology of mainstream economics. Though the same ideas had been already discredited to a large extent by the philosophy of science at the time, mainstream economists did not reflect it satisfactorily. Aside from a historical expose the thesis consists also of an outline of a possible future development of the prevailing form of economic theory; four scenarios of future potential development are presented. In the final parts of the thesis, which are focused more specifically, the author appraises negatively options of the Austrian School as well as post-Keynesianism to influence in a more significant manner the mainstream economics during the post-crisis era.

Wirtschaftsuniv., Diss.--Wien, 2004.