Free Market vs. Social Responsibility Decision Time at the CED

Committee for Economic Development, Addressing the Crucial Issues, 1979 Annual Report (New York: Committee for Economic Development, 1980), p. 2.

Ibid.

Committee for Economic Development. Social Responsibilities of Business Corporations (New York: Committee for Economic Development, 1971), p. 46.

Ibid., pp. 15 and 13.

Ibid., p. 43; see also pp. 32–34.

Ibid., pp. 50, 51.

Training and Jobs for the Urban Poor (New York: Committee for Economic Development, July 1970); Financing the Nation's Housing Needs (New York: Committee for Economic Development, April 1973); An Approach to Federal Urban Policy (New York: Committee for Economic Development, December 1977); Jobs for the Hard to Employ: New Directions for a Public-Private Partnership (New York: Committee for Economic Development, January 1978).

A New U.S. Farm Policy for Changing World Food Needs (New York: Committee for Economic Development, October 1974); Key Elements of a National Energy Strategy (New York: Committee for Economic Development. June 1977); Helping Insure Our Energy Future: A Program for Developing Synthetic Fuel Plants Now (New York: Committee for Economic Development, July 1979); Stimulating Technological Progress (New York: Committee for Economic Development, January 1980).

Committee for Economic Development, Redefining Government's Role in the Market System (New York: Committee for Economic Development, 1979), pp. 36–37.

Ibid., p.57.

Ibid., pp. 15,57.

Ibid., pp. 36, 58,60.

Ibid., pp. 33, 34. Nathan Robert R. has frequently chided his fellow trustees for not supporting antitrust more strongly. See his comments, pp. 136–137, 138, and 140.

Ibid., p. 95.

Ibid., pp. 50–54.

This position would seem to invite an expansion of (private) social voluntarism by business, but, as noted earlier, the 1979 statement ignores this possibility, which CED in 1971 advocated but found to be patchy and insubstantial.

Eberle William D. , as quoted in CED's annual report for 1979, p. 6.

A similar view of business's preference for incremental reform can be found in Chamberlain Neil W. , The Limits of Corporate Responsibility (New York: Basic Books, 1973).

Nathan Robert R. , a consistent dissenter in both CED's 1971 and 1979 statements raised “the question of determining what humane values should be pursued and what social environment is desirable… . Is the corporate entity an appropriate vehicle for representing the divergent and often conflicting interests of its stockholders, management, or even workers concerning such fundamental factors as humane values and social environment?” Nathan's implication is that corporations as presently constituted are not the answer. CED, Social Responsibilities, p. 68.

The most candidly negative comments about business ever to appear in any CED policy statement were contributed by Philip Sporn. He voted to disapprove the 1971 statement entirely and then sprinkled it with peppery comments about “careless scholarship” and lack of “veracity” of some of its assertions. He pointed out that large corporations may be marked by “elephantiasis, arrogance, contempt for law”; that top managers often control the board of directors and thereby vitiate the trusteeship concept of management; that business creates many negative social impacts; that management “is all too frequently deficient in its understanding of morals and ethics”; and that instead of setting business up “on a heroic pedestal” to receive “unrestrained—indeed unmerited—adulation,” ways should be found simply to improve and broaden business's performance within “our social-economic system.” CED, Social Responsibilities, pp. 65–68.

Although this kind of dissent is harder to find in the 1979 report, something of the same impatience is revealed in the dissenting comment of Philip Klutznick and three other trustees that “the private sector cannot be completely absolved of the role that it has played over the years in helping to create this morass [of government regulations].” CED, Redefining Government's Role, pp. 137–138.

The data for the quantitative analysis that follows are derived from an examination of the membership lists of the various committees printed in CED 1971 and CED 1979.

See reference 7.

CED, Addressing the Crucial Issues, especially pp. 2–3.

Ibid., p. 2.

CED, Redefining Government's Role, p. 139. For a similar viewpoint, see Fenn Dan H. , “Finding Where the Power Lies in Washington,” Harvard Business Review (September-October 1979), pp. 144–153.