A Perspective on Profit

Almost 50 years ago the New York Times published an article by Milton Friedman under the heading The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profit.[1] In it he argued that discussions of the ‘social responsibility of business’ lacked rigour and that the manager of a business was primarily responsible to the people who own it and should always act in their interest – which is presumed to be financial, says Professor Simon Bridge, Visiting Professor at Ulster University

While many people may not have heard of the article there is nevertheless a common view that those in business are, or should be, concerned primarily with maximising their income – and therefore it is expected that businesses will usually be seeking to maximise the profit they can make from any deal.

Profit or greed?

Such was Friedman’s reputation that this belief may, to at least some extent, be a legacy of his article which came at a time when views labelled neo-liberal were again becoming popular. With the ending of the cold war there was a belief that capitalist economic systems had triumphed over socialist ones as the only credible foundation for a sound economy and that the essence of capitalism (and what drove it) was the desire by individuals to profit personally from their investments of time and/or money. So private greed was lauded (“greed is good”) and thought to be the key to economic success.

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