After an overall overview of the case which brought to light water crises in general, and gave several outlines about Nestle in Pakistan, let us now move to a comprehensive theoretical overview of the main ethical theories & concepts.
Theoretical Overview
There is a great deal of research being carried out which resulted in many definitions and concepts of a more ethical, and a more transparent way of doing business, nevertheless, many of such concepts in one way or another are similar or leading to the same overall concept.
Marcel van Marrewijk (2003) stated that various authors referred to three main approaches regarding the business responsibility towards the society.
The first is the classical shareholder approach mentioned by Friedman(1970) who argued that "The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”, the main critique here is that many organisations collapsed as a result of putting short-term profits first, sacrificing long-term interests (Bannerjee, 2008, Maxfield, 2011, Richter and Mar 2004)
On the other hand, the second is stakeholder approach "Freeman (1984)" who pointed out that the organisation should balance between different stakeholder 's interests.
The third is the societal approach which is the broader view of the 2nd approach in which the companies work to serve the society as a whole, this approach somehow not far from Bowen (1953) principle who defined corporate social responsibility (CSR) as: “the obligations of businessmen to