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The Politics of Corporate Social Responsibility in American Health Care and Home Loans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2016

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) became an important subject among business leaders during the post–World War II era. Business leaders often used the idea of CSR to explain actions they took to prevent additional government involvement in their industry. They argued that because they were behaving in a socially responsible manner, further federal programming was unnecessary. The cases of health insurance and home mortgages demonstrate how this political approach frequently required business leaders to alter their profitmaking strategies in order to substantiate their argument before the public. Thus, the history of corporate social responsibility is critical for understanding a hidden facet of American political development.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2016 

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References

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87 “Eisenhower Cites U.S. Housing Duty,” New York Times, 12 May 1953, 29; “Texts of Eisenhower, Baruch, and Moses Talks at Housing Projects,” New York Times, 20 Aug. 1953, 16.

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89 Reed, Commercial Bank Management, 351–52, 367; ABA, The Commercial Banking Industry (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962), 220 Google Scholar. Residential loans accounted for 28.5 percent of time deposits in 1960. This decrease demonstrates that although bankers shouldered increased risks to continue supporting the mortgage market, they were willing to go only so far during periods of tight money. See ABA, The Problems of Commercial Bank Liquidity (New York, 1957), 14 Google Scholar.

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91 For example, J. Howard Edgerton, “Adequate Private Home Credit—Or Government Intervention?” Savings and Loan News, July 1955, 26–30; Green, C. W., “More Goods to More People,” Banking News 39 (Sept. 1946): 138 Google Scholar; Richard O. Wiesner, “The Impact of Consumer Credit in the Community,” Proceedings of the National Consumer Credit Conference, 22 Mar. 1961, 20–28; Need Seen for Bankers to Watch Credit ‘Danger Signs,’Banking News 42 (Apr. 1950): 5658 Google Scholar.

92 Jones, “Home Mortgages,” 39. Between 1934 and the 1980s, Regulation Q of the Glass-Steagall Act prohibited commercial banks from paying interest on checking accounts and limited the amount of interest that they could pay on savings accounts.

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99 Waterhouse, Benjamin, Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA (Princeton, N.J., 2013)Google Scholar.