Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Social Contract with Business

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Discussion participants countered initial arguments for retention of the article, citing original research and not meeting the notability criteria of having been discussed as a topic itself. -- Trevj (talk · contribs) 07:55, 18 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Social Contract with Business[edit]

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Looks like a rather disguised book review/promo, written by the author himself. Off course, I might be wrong but Bookcover CSB.jpg looks very suspicious. The Banner talk 22:02, 18 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Business-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:03, 19 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Randykitty (talk) 13:14, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep (and modify with Talk page discussion, probably moving to a new title). Hmm, difficult situation. Let's Assume Good Faith here: the author is a new contributor to wikipedia, and went through an Articles For Creation process, and this article got approved (by AFC editor User:Timtrent after earlier consideration by AFC editor User:Joe Decker). From this comment at an AFC reviewer's talk page, I see that the article author is the author of the book of that title. In the AFC process, the article was improved, to be less about the book itself. I don't think this is meant as bald promotion for sake of getting profits for the book author. I believe the book author is an expert, has written a dissertation and has published a book, and they are trying to contribute on this topic of their expertise. The book author is not the first or only one to write about social contracts or about business's responsibilities, IMO, though they assert originality in their comment linked above. They may be a leader in integrating/synthesizing a specific theory, i am not sure, but the book itself is probably a useable, citable source on this topic area. So, I think the article title should be changed (to no longer be the exact title of the book) and the article should be modified to make it a more general treatment, and more clearly not just the same as the book's topic. And, I hope there may be some external review of the book that can be used. But, I hope we can use the interest and expertise of this contributor, rather than deleting all of their work! The article already does link to social contract general article, which is not so much about business's social contract. An article about the business social contract idea does seem useful, and it is great that this author is willing to contribute a graphic and so on. There are related topics--like Triple bottom line and Corporate social responsibility and other topics indexed at template {{Social accountability}} that could/should be linked, and/or this topic should be integrated with them.

I think it is best to Keep this for now and let's try to work to integrate it better. Watch Talk page of this article and author's Talk page. --do ncr am 15:53, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I agree with Doncram, who makes a persuasive point. I accepted the draft on the simple basis that it had rough edges, but met our needs of having sufficient verifiable notability to be a main namespace article. WP:AFC does not require perfection. IT simply requires that the draft is good enough and likely to survive a deletion discussion. This nomination puts that to the test. I stand by my assessment when I accepted the article. It has faults, but they are for cleaning up, not for deletion. Fiddle Faddle 15:59, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: From some reading:

"The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits", 1970, by Milton Friedman, a NYTimes essay (already linked from article)
"Psychological Contracts: A Nano-Level Perspective on Social Contract Theory", 2006, by Jeffery A. Thompson and David W. Hart, Journal of Business Ethics (2006) 68:229–241. (article in a very well respected journal, found by me from an off-line lit search and literature database)
"Social contract and psychological contract: a comparison", 2012, by Yvon Pesqueux in Society and Business Review
the Wikipedia article Corporate social responsibility
nice short article on corporate social contract: if a corporation now has individual rights, it also has responsibilities

and some other knowledge and some more consideration, I think there is a need for a Wikipedia article on Corporate social contract or Social responsibilities of a business (or similar title) detailing different views on specifics of corporate obligations, and that the article up for AFD could be moved to that topic title and revised. I don't have the dissertation or book in question, but I gather that this author is arguing about what obligations businesses have. And detailing 8 areas where businesses should consider taking action, to move outwards (per the diagram) from crisis/poor performance to taking more positive actions as world participants. It seems logical, and I am inclined to accept that the author has made a contribution in categorizing the obligations, consistent with previous academic and philosophical theory. There are many other views on what obligations corporations have. The Corporate social responsibility#UK retail sector section lists several sources asserting, variously, 3 or 4 dimensions of performance. The revised article, under revised title, would collect and compare various views of the specific obligations. One view (Friedman's, taken to extreme) is simply there are no additional obligations that corporations have beyond achieving profits and generating returns for shareholders. This article would complement the Corporate social responsibility article, which is broader and which should not get bogged down in detailing various lists of obligations proposed. So, this would be like a list-article, a list of various authorities' views on the obligations that businesses have. And I'll accept that this author has a specific contribution and would be included in the list. I am quite sure that there is a lack of consensus out in the world, about what obligations businesses have, but there is argument ongoing and there are positions taken, and it's useful to have a wikipedia article on this. --do ncr am 18:14, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete My concerns are that the article is mostly an WP:ESSAY, loaded with original research, mostly a synthesis of the idea of social contract with business ethics, with references to the well-known term social contract, and a reference to enterprise, but no references to the full term as a term. I base my finding of original research after doing numerous sweeps of newspapers and magazines with few coming up with the exact phrase Social contract with business in any kind of consistent sense. So I think Banner (who I've disagreed with at points) is spot-on in his analysis here. Although, to be fair, I did find the term being used in this article, and a mention here, and a mention here, but it does not seem like the term has any coherent identity as term-in-use, apart from Jopie Coetzee's book and writings, as if the phrase is used in different senses by different people, vaguely meaning business ethics. Market researcher Daniel Yankelovich used the term here, but his sense was different from what the current wiki-article is talking about (ie, a "business model"), and senses like here really are talking about something more akin to corporate responsibility or business ethics, similar to this mention here. But even these mentions don't appear in the article as references; instead there are hard-to-check book references lacking inline citations -- troubling, considering that the whole article smacks of original research, with references to Coetzee's book. See, if the book references are valid, wouldn't there be a meal-sized portion of easy-to-find inline citations as well? If I search for the phrase "social contract with business" (in quotes) with the following filters, I find nothing in major US newspapers, nothing in major international news sources, and a sweep of major business sources did not yield much except two Forbes hits (but I could not find the exact phrase in either Forbes article). And searching using no news filters in the browser bar yields, well, surprise, Jopie Coetzee left and right, suggesting original research. As Joe Decker advised here, Wikipedia is not a good place to try to float new ideas.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:08, 2 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Spartaz ^Humbug! 16:39, 3 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Delete my concern, along with the promotional aspect mentioned by the nom, and the essay and original research aspects mentioned by Tomwsulcer, is that this topic as is is not notable. Aside from Donaldson & Dunfee (1999) it rests entirely on the author's (Coetzee's) work. The topic has not been dealt with significantly in multiple reliable independent sources. --Bejnar (talk) 01:53, 9 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete — WP:OR / WP:SYNTH. The sources predominantly serve to advance the assertions put forth by the text of the article instead of the other way around (e.g., citing Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, etc). The vast majority of the meat of the article (i.e., the parallel-phrased bullet points) is sourced to "Coetzee, J. 2012: The Social Contract with Business – beyond the quest for global sustainability. Xlibris Publishers, London," which makes for giving WP:UNDUE weight to a single source (even if it were a genuine, notable academic concept). --slakr^\ talk / 09:48, 14 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Wow! This isn't even an Article! It's an essay, and probably a C or C+ essay at that (at least at the high school I graduated from), so let's get rid of it. After all, Wikipedia by policy is not a place to publish essays of any kind. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 07:36, 16 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.