Legal responsibility is a company's social responsibility to obey society's laws and regulations as it tries to meet its economic responsibilities. For instance, companies award stock options so that managers and employees are rewarded when the company does well. Stock options give you the right to purchase shares of stock at a set price. Let's say that on June 1, the company awards you the right (or option) to buy 100 shares of stock, which, on that day, sells for $10 a share. If the stock price falls below $10, the options are worthless. But, if the stock price rises above $10, the options have value. Specifically, if the stock price rises to$15 a share, you can exercise your options by paying the company $1,000 (100 shares at $10 a share). But because the stock is selling for $15, you can sell your 100 shares for $1,500 and make $500. But what if you could go back in time to, say, January 1 when the stock was selling for $5? You'd make $1,000 instead of $500. It would be unethical and illegal, however, to “backdate” your options to when the stock sold for a lower price. Doing so would illegally increase the value of your options. But, that's exactly what the president and chief operating officer did at Monster Worldwide (which runs Monster.com ). By improperly backdating his options, he earned an additional $24 million.102 At Monster, however, backdating was condoned by the CEO, who routinely backdated options for members of the management team.103