Opinion: Corporate Social Responsibility Is Irrelevant and Ineffective

The popular notion that corporations have a responsibility to give back to the public—and that doing so will make a company more profitable—is a flawed strategy at best, and at worse, a dangerous one, writes Aneel Karnani, an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s business school, in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal,

Mr. Karnani says corporations’ focus on social responsibility will “delay or discourage more effective measures to enhance social welfare in those cases where profits and the public good are at odds. As society looks to companies to address these problems, the real solutions may be ignored,” he writes.