Editor's Note

• Author: Robert E. Frederick
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/0045-3609.00031
• Published date: 01 March 1999
• Date: 01 March 1999

Editor’s Note

This issue of Business and Society Review inaugurates the

first significant change in the format of the journal since its

initial publication in the spring of 1972. We hope that the

new format will make the journal easier to use while retaining read-

ability. From time to time we may make other minor alterations in

format, but we do not anticipate additional major changes.

It is my pleasure to include in this issue of the journal a special

section devoted to papers delivered at a conference on May 28–29,

1998, at the Carol and Lawrence Zicklin Center for Business Ethics

Research, located at The Wharton School of the University of Penn-

sylvania. The conference, which was titled “Ethical Issues in Finan-

cial Services,” brought together a number of prominent business

people and academics to investigate topics with ethical implications

for the financial services industry. Tom Dunfee, who is the director

of the Zicklin Center and the Kolodny Professor of Social Responsi-

bility at Wharton, very kindly agreed to take the lead on this project,

and I thank him for his efforts.

While preparing this issue I happened to look at the table of con-

tents of the first issue of Business and Society Review. The issue

began with the transcript of an interview with a familiar figure, Mil-

ton Friedman, defending his ideas about an equally familiar

topic—corporate social responsibility. As usual, Friedman neither

wastes time nor minces words. In the first sentence of his first

response, he describes the notion that corporations have social

responsibilities as “utter hogwash.” In his view businesses cannot

have responsibilities, only people can. Thus, he continues,

. . . the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay

within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities

other than to make as much money for their stockholders as

possible? And my answer to that is, no, they do not.

© 1999 Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College. Published by Blackwell Publishers,

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.

Business and Society Review 104:1 1–4