Social responsibility.

Social responsibility refers to the relationship between an organization, particularly a commercial organization, and the society in which it exists. The degree of social responsibility believed appropriate for an organization to practice has changed over the course of time and also varies from one culture to another. In more individualistic societies, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, the tendency since the Thatcher–Reagan revolution of the late 1970s and early 1980s has been for businesses to claim that they have little social responsibility. This has resulted in the construct of the “American business model,” which posits that a company exists in a social vacuum and that its only duty is to maximize returns to its shareholders. This tendency has become associated with the willingness of large corporations to avoid paying any taxes at all, to outsource jobs overseas at short notice, and to squeeze more work out of employees while at the same time minimizing their salaries and benefits. However, this idea has been challenged in the twenty-first century, with many companies taking a progressive approach to how they view social responsibility.