기업의 사회적 책임 제고를 위한 경쟁법의 과제

Abstract

Basically, enterprises are just a private economic entity that pursue their personal profits. In this sense, it’s not an expectative to ask firms take social responsibilities other than the obligations on their shareholders or creditors. As many evils occurred from the capitalism come out, however, the idea that enterprises should have social responsibilities is newly forming and getting more expanded. Especially, the competition law whose goal is consumer welfare is close related to enterprises’ social responsibilities. The current legal framework has inherent limitations to fulfill the role to strengthen their social responsibilities, in that it can’t help adapting a passive way by which it just prohibit illegalities. Thus it can be more desirable to make an environment in which enterprises are willing to comply with the rule of the market economy. In this context, this article intended to deal with the issue of enterprises’ social responsibilities newly with an angle of the competition law. In the first part, it analyzes the relationship between enterprises’ social responsibilities and the competition law. And then, it points out the limitation of the current regulative approaches and pursues a new way of approach to strengthen their social responsibilities. Based on the said work of analysis, it insists on as a conclusion that the current Korean competition law need to promote compliance programs among enterprises and expand the scope of leniency or immunity for the enterprises that have voluntary been employing and effectively utilizing them.