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Bounded goodness: marketing implications of Drucker on corporate responsibility

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Abstract

Drucker’s immense contribution to the thinking and practice of management extends to social responsibility in business. This work goes back over 60 years but remains relevant today—notwithstanding the impacts of globalization and the greater interconnectedness of business and society—and not least to marketing. Given trends in marketing research and practice as well as the importance of paying tribute to Drucker and preserving his legacy, this paper examines the implications of Drucker’s CSR “principles” for marketing practice. As well as revealing their significance, it also considers Drucker’s views on the limits of social responsibility, referred to here as “bounded goodness”. It examines how Drucker’s thinking informs the challenging question of “how much is enough?” in relation to corporate responsibility issues such as food marketing and obesity, availability of AIDS drugs in Africa, and supply chains and labor rights.

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Notes

  1. Drucker generally referred to “social responsibility” and “corporate social responsibility” in his writing. These terms remain in use today but various other terms are also used, such as “corporate responsibility” (because it doesn’t appear to preclude environmental impacts), “corporate citizenship” (a term preferred by U.S. corporations, but often used largely in relation to philanthropic activities), “sustainable development” (a term seen to better capture environmental considerations and thus favored by resource extraction companies) and the “triple bottom line” (the idea of giving attention to a nominal social and environmental as well as economic bottom line). This article mostly retains Drucker’s language and the abbreviation CSR and uses the term corporate responsibility in reference to more contemporary thinking on corporate social and environmental responsibilities.

  2. While there are various compilations of his work, Drucker’s own (2001) collection of sixty years of writing on management, The Essential Drucker, contains a chapter on social impacts and social problems that is an edited version of the five chapters in Management (1974).

  3. In contrast to his endorsement of social responsibility in business, Drucker expressed doubts about business ethics. This has been traced to his experience of the Arbeitsfreude movement in Nazi Germany (Schwartz 1998).

  4. The 2005 McKinsey survey, mentioned earlier, found “one in six agrees with the thesis, famously advanced by Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman, that high returns should be a corporation’s sole focus” (McKinsey Quarterly 2006, p. 34).

  5. Source: www.jnj.com/our_company/our_credo/index.htm (Accessed February 6th, 2007.)

  6. Source: www.joinred.com/ (Accessed January 19th, 2007.)

  7. See Center for Workforce Preparation, Welfare to Work: An Economic Boost at: www.dol.gov/cfbci/tlc/docs/BusinessPartnershipsLibrary (Accessed February 5th, 2007.)

  8. For information on Exxonmobil’s corporate responsibility activities today, see: http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/community.aspx (Accessed 20th November 2007.)

  9. For further information on the Millennium Development Goals, see: http://www.devinfo.info/mdginfo2007/ (Accessed 20th November 2007.)

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  1. INSEAD Chaired Professor of Ethics and Social Responsibility, INSEAD, Boulevard de Constance, 77305, Fontainebleau Cedex, France

    N. Craig Smith

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  1. N. Craig Smith
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Smith, N.C. Bounded goodness: marketing implications of Drucker on corporate responsibility. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 37, 73–84 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-008-0110-4

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