In 1970 the economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman called corporate social responsibility “hypocritical window dressing,” saying that businesspeople inclined toward it “reveal a suicidal impulse.” How times have changed. Some executives still take a Friedmanesque view, but most accept social and civic responsibilities as indispensable to doing good business; their enterprises won’t survive if those responsibilities are ignored.
A version of this article appeared in the November 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review.