Chapter 8 **Examining Chinese Consumers' Knowledge, Face-Saving, Materialistic, and Ethical Values with Attitudes of Counterfeit Goods 127**

Preface

work places.

Social responsibility – what exactly does it mean? How important is it in market driven, cap‐ italist societies? The construct is not black or white, different people (and corporations) look at it through a different lens; there are advocates as well as critics of the concept. In trying to be objective but more so advocating social justice, some explanations are necessary and I am taking the opportunity to use several scholarly articles as well a TV program, radio broadcast and newspaper articles to convey the point that systemic changes are needed. Let's begin with what corporate social responsibility actually entails. J. Snider, R. P. Hill, R. and D. Martin [1] discuss four pillars of corporate social responsibility: economic, legal, ethi‐ cal, and discretionary: Economic responsibility means to make profit and expand the busi‐ ness. Legal responsibility refers to obeying the law. The ethical component means that companies have to respect the rights of others and meet the obligations placed on them by society to ensure these rights. The discretionary component indicates philanthropic activities that support the broader community. Snider et al. find that these components look simple enough to be followed, however, considering the global market economy, different rules and regulations of different globalised companies, different basic characteristics of human behaviour, and different circumstances, make following clear and reliable guidelines diffi‐ cult. That may be so, but acknowledging recent environmental disasters, air pollution and climate change, deforestation, species extinction, soil degradation, asbestos mortalities, working conditions in sweatshops, and corporate (mis)management, there is clearly an ur‐ gent need to clarify corporate social responsibility and to legalize it. During the last few years, some changes have occurred after the public threatened to boycott certain products. These changes were implemented or enforced by trade policies or government negotiations, but they are not sufficient to worldwide save environmental destruction or to create safe

Interestingly, according to T. L. Besser [2], a certain connection between business and society has been the subject of social scientists and philosophers at least since the industrial revolu‐ tion; in fact "the works of Marx, Comte, Durkheim, Weber, Toennies, Spencer, were prompt‐ ed by the authors' desire to explain the societal antecedents and consequences of the forces of capitalism" (p. 14) The author also argues that in modern society more than ever power and wealth equals responsibility, i.e. businesses do have ethical and discretionary social re‐ sponsibility. Scholars such as T. Bivins [3], J. Snider et al. [4], D. Clift and G. Wells [5], as well as P. Schreck [6] confirm this point of view. Schreck starts his book with the words "Twenty years after the end of communism, problems of business ethics in capitalism have become increasingly important" (p. v). Advocates argue that corporations should act social‐ ly responsible, business should benefit its stakeholders as well as the overall community. Critics, particularly earlier ones, the most well-known being Milton Friedman [7] in the

Joy M. Kozar and Shuyi Huang
