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Ethical Perspectives of Friedman, Drucker and Murphy

In: Business and Management

Submitted By oldmannews
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Abstract
The purpose of this week’s assignment was to read three peer reviewed/scholarly journals and compare and contrast each author’s ethical perspective. The articles were: What is Business Ethics by Peter F. Drucker, 1981, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits by Milton Friedman, 1970 and The Relevance of Responsibility to Ethical Business Decisions by Patrick E. Murphy, 2010.

Ethical Perspectives of Friedman, Drucker and Murphy Peter F. Drucker is known as the man who invented management. Drucker wrote many books on management and influenced the way business and industry thinks about management. “Peter F. Drucker was a writer, professor, management consultant and self-described ‘social ecologist,’ who explored the way human beings organize themselves and interact much the way an ecologist would observe and analyze the biological world (Drucker Institute, 2013).” Drucker’s paper from 1981, or 32 years ago, was trying to answer the same questions which today’s business society and government are trying to answer: What is business ethics/social responsibility and who is responsible for both? These are difficult questions to answer and questions which Drucker sets out to answer in Casuist, Ethics of Prudence and Confucianism. “Business ethics undoubtedly is a close parallel to casuistry. Its origin is political, as was that of casuistry. Its basic thesis, that ethics for the ruler, and especially for the business executive, has to express social responsibility is exactly the starting point of the Casuist. But if business ethics is casuistry, then it will not last long-and long before it dies, it will have become a tool of the business executive to justify what for other people would be unethical behavior, rather than a tool to restrain the business executive and to impose tight

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