Leadership and Business Wisdom - Limits of Social Responsibility.

Byline: S. KAMAL HAYDER KAZMI

Whenever a business has disregarded the limitation of economic performance and has assumed social responsibilities that it could not support economically, it has soon gotten into trouble.

Union carbide was not socially responsible when it put its into Vienna, West Virginia, to alleviate unemployment there. It was, in fact, irresponsible. The plant was marginal to begin with. The process was obsolescent. At best the plant could barely keep its head above water. And this, inevitably, meant a plant unable to take on social responsibility, even for its own impacts. Because the plant was uneconomical to...