ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two issues: how business interacts with poverty, and how that relationship is affected by the approach to management called corporate responsibility. In the free market system, an inefficient company has the potential to cause poverty if it fails to generate wealth, create jobs and provide goods and services. In the long run, developing economy labour markets may obey the scientific laws claimed of liberal economics, and if so wages will rise with the overall upgrading of a country's economy. The framework of business's interactions with poverty used in the chapter shows that, even if a company focuses on its financial mission, there can be good reasons to consciously manage its relationship with society. The chapter discusses that there are different ways in which business interacts with poverty, and that each of these both demand and create particular opportunities.
