Milton Friedman goes on tour

PUBLIC-RELATIONS folk are not noted for burning the midnight oil over the works of great economists. But Edelman, an American firm, has come up with a clever idea. It asked members of the “informed public”—broadly, people with university degrees who are in the top quarter of wage-earners in their particular age groups and countries—what they think of Milton Friedman's famous assertion that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”

The issue of whether businesses should promote corporate social responsibility (CSR) is hotly debated. Many of the world's biggest companies (including BP and the now defunct Enron) have embraced the notion. So have politicians. Britain's 2006 Companies Act requires businesses to report on their CSR records. The United Nations has a “global compact” for CSR. But the world's Friedmanites have waged a relentless guerrilla war against the idea, denouncing it as a farrago of value-destroying nonsense.

Edelman's research gives a good overview of the state of the global battle. The world's most Friedman-friendly country is the United Arab Emirates, with 84% agreeing with his dictum: perhaps not surprising for a small, business-oriented country. Second prize goes to Japan, a country normally associated with stakeholder capitalism, but which may have tired of its model after two decades of stagnation. Sweden also scored remarkably highly, with 60% of people agreeing with Friedman. Perhaps people feel little need for CSR when the government cares for them from cradle to grave. Yet some supposedly Friedmanite bastions went wobbly, with Britain scoring 43% and Friedman's own homeland, the United States, 56%.

The world's striving nations tend to disdain CSR. The top ten Friedmanite countries include four emerging markets (India, Indonesia, Mexico and Poland) and two recently emerged ones (Singapore and South Korea). But there are important exceptions to the rule. Well-informed folk in China and Brazil almost match their peers in Germany and Italy in their enthusiasm for corporate do-gooding.