World-scale problems require our attention and tackling them will involve a level of collaboration as yet unseen
What duties do businesses have to society? Do they have responsibilities beyond making profit?
These questions are not new. They have existed for hundreds of years, even predating the time of prominent Oxford political economist Adam Smith. Yet the responses to them are as salient now as they were in 1759, when Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Smith’s seminal work explores how our moral ideas and actions are a product of our nature as social creatures. It also concerns the duties that we owe to one another. When it comes to business, says Peter Tufano, Peter Moores Dean and Professor of Finance, organisations – which are collections of individuals – inherit the duties that we have to one another as individuals.