Talking about social responsibility of business, it actually should be called “the social responsibility of businessman”—since only people can take responsibilities. So what are the social responsibilities of businessman? To eliminate discrimination? To avoid pollution? I would like to say that these “responsibilities” are just floating on the surface; what businessmen really do is that take social responsibilities as “a cloak for actions that are justified on other grounds rather than a reason for those actions(Milton, 2007)”.

In September 2015, Volkswagen claimed that there were 11 million diesel cars carried the  software which were able to cheat while testing the emissions, and it influenced both American and European markets and led to billions-of-dollar loss of the company. The profit of that year was impacted terribly, and it’s shares dropped by 35 percent at the end of Friday, with a shrink of value of stock market of 25 billion pounds within just 2 days(Ewing, 2015).

Just as Milton says: “one man’s good is another’s evil(Milton, 2007)”, what Volkswagen did was to pursue the maximum profit for their own good—by cheating on the emission test to reduce the cost of the cars, which would result in the pollution of air(Milton, 2007). Here, I want to talk about the social responsibilities that Volkswagen (or its corporate executives) should take. As for an automaker, the primary responsibilities are to produce cars with safe devices, avoid pollution, etc.. However, the cheating behavior of Volkswagen shows that it does not have “social consciences” as a part of this society, or “social responsibilities” for the public.

In my opinion, all of the companies, not only for Volkswagen, need to find a balance between the pursuit of profit and social responsibility, and compete with each other in a fair and righteous way, otherwise it may bring unexpected consequences.

References:

Ewing, Jack. (2015 Sept 23). Volkswagen Says 11 Million Cars Worldwide Are Affected in Diesel Deception. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/business/international/volkswagen-diesel-car-scandal.html

Milton, Friedman. (2007). The Social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.