A survey of attitudes to business turns up some intriguing national differences

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. …