Mal Fletcher comments on the development of social responsibility in business

This perception is not without foundation, as even small-to-medium businesses find bank loans hard to come by.

The banks are, of course, right to refuse loans to people who have not demonstrated adequate financial planning or forethought about the implications of owing money.

Banks are culpable, however, in that they play to the stereotype of being driven by a corporate culture that cares too much for profits and too little for people.

The wider business community is becoming more aware of - and in some cases responsive to - the growing push for ethical behaviour coming from its customers and stake-holders.

My work often involves giving keynote presentations to business and civic leaders. In conversations with leaders of enterprises large and small, I see an increased interest in finding ethical solutions to the social and business challenges of our time.

In part, this change is driven by the rise of the so-called Millennial Generation into leadership within business.

The cohort, aged roughly between 16 and 33 years of age in the UK, place a high premium on trust. This is perhaps a consequence of their having been the most parentally nurtured - some employers would claim over-nurtured - generation in recent history, generically speaking.

To a large degree, this generation, armed as it is by powerful digital technologies, has driven the trust revolution which began in person-to-person retail a la Ebay and spread through micro-finance lending and crowd funding.

In each of these types of business, trust is the key currency and ethical behaviour is a matter of survival.

It is the Millennials who, more than any other group, have made unlikely cult heroes of academics such as Michael Sandel of Harvard University and Debra Satz of Standford University. Both are ethicists who call for a re-examination of modern markets and business practices.

Both follow in the footsteps of the original champion of free markets, the Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith. He advocated that business can and should be about producing positive social change, at the same time as making profits.

Though his teachings have had a profound impact on economics, Smith was not educated as an economist. He was a moral philosopher, or what we might call today an ethicist.

Arguably, ethics is moving closer to the forefront of business decision-making in many circles, as post-recession moral concerns, heightened by Millennial sensibilities, call into question behaviours that would have been considered normal, even desirable, a decade ago.

Whether there is to be anything approaching a true ethics revolution in business remains to be seen.

One thing, however, is certain. As Wonga is discovering, companies that intend to overlook their social responsibilities will need to think again; not just because government authorities are watching their behaviour more closely, but because they will have public sentiment and, perhaps in time, activism working against them.