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The Case for a Pragmatic Alignment
By Patrick LEVALDAUR, General Secretary / Chairman of SQC, EFPA Luxembourg AsBL.
For much of the last century, the question of whether business and sustainability could coexist was framed by a sharp ideological divide, embodied by two of the most influential thinkers in modern economic and management theory: Milton Friedman and R. Edward Freeman.
Friedman famously articulated that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.” According to this view, the purpose of the firm was purely economic: to produce efficiently, innovate, compete, and generate returns for shareholders. Social or environmental concerns, while legitimate, were considered the domain of...
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