Is social responsibility of Capitalism a recent phenomenon?

Geoffrey Jones of HBS writes this really interesting paper.
He says  corporate responsibility has been associated with capitalism for a long time. It isn’t a recent development. However, the reasons why certain companies engaged in csr were for different reasons:

• Four factors have driven beliefs that corporations have responsibilities beyond making money for their owners. These factors are spirituality; self-interest; fears of government intervention; and the belief that governments were incapable of addressing major social issues.
• Many of the most forceful exponents of responsibility had strong religious or spiritual values. They did not accept the arguments of Adam Smith, Ted Levitt, and Milton Friedman that they should set aside these values in the sphere of business, and simply take on trust that self-interest and profit maximization would automatically deliver public good.
• Self-interest also mattered. In the United States, where corporate philanthropy acquired a unique importance, rich business leaders can be regarded as making investments in shaping the future. Less grandiosely, corporate social responsibility and philanthropy could be interpreted as reflecting the desire of business leaders to secure legitimacy for themselves and their firms. In the United States in particular wanting to pre-empt government intervention was important also.
• While most research has focused on developed countries, historically the non-Western world has produced many pioneers of corporate responsibility. These include Shibusawa Eiichi in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Japan, Jamnalal Bajaj in interwar India, Ibrahim Abouleish in postwar Egypt, and multiple Latin American companies today.
• Historically and today, there has never been a consensus on what responsibility means, and although the language of corporate responsibility has now diffused globally, there remain wide variations in the relationship between rhetoric and practice. A key challenge now is disentangling the now near-universal rhetoric of corporate responsibility with what is actually happening.

He draws examples from corprates across the world which makes this a really interesting read.
Business history esp of the kind Prof Jones writes is really exciting. Though, one does not really agree with his interpretation of what Smith said on businesses. Econs have pointed that Smith was as much concerned about moral issues than just economics ones.  I so wish if Prof. Friedman had clarified his statement that only purpose for business is to make profits. It has been widely misinterpreted and stretched. It has led people to defend anything under the sun and has led fancy things like CSR becoming a style statement..
The passage on India and particularly how Bajaj and Tatas has social responsibility so early on is an interesting read. Wish we had more business historians in India as well..

(Blog Entry Adopted from Mostly Economics)