Some people believe that corporations have a responsibility to promote thewell-being of the societies and environments in which they operate. Othersbelieve that the only responsibility of corporations, provided they operatewithin the law, is to make as much money as possible.
Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely aligns withyour own position and explain your reasoning for the position you take. Indeveloping and supporting your position, you should address both of the views presented.
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This statement talks about the responsibilities of corporations, andpeople have generally two different sides of opinions concerning about whethercorporations should take some external negative influences into account. One ofthe sides holds that firms are supposed to take the responsibility abouteliminating negative influences to the neighborhood. And the other claims thatthey should make as much money as possible within the law. For the secondclaim, I have to say that they're correct in the long run, but not in the shortrun. That means caring about externalities would make losses to firms in ashort period, but they'll benefit from it in a long enough period. And it’seasy to show that these two different positions can be actually merged into oneopinion.
We consider corporations' worrying about well-being of the neighborhoodand environments in a short term first. If they do so, they will buy lots ofequipment to eliminate poisonous chemicals or try hard to minimize noises. Andsome state-of-the-art machines and techniques will no doubt cost a huge bunchof money. And they'll not get any direct monetary benefit in immediately.Furthermore, they may even not able to make the balance sheet breakeven becauseit's not likely to make so much money in a second, especially for smallcompanies. Therefore, they'll under much pressure due to a deficit. It seemsthat taking this responsibility contradicts the goal of maximizing profit forthe firms.
However, it becomes not a contradiction at all if we consider about it inthe long run. Once corporations buy new equipment to decrease social cost andpromote the well-being of neighborhood, they'll make more money in a longenough and a certain period of time for two reasons. In the first, someenvironmentalists will support this firm so they are likely to consume moreproducts from it because it follows their notion. And they are even more apt torecommend it and the moral to more people around them. As a consequence, moreconsumers will bring benefit to the corporation. In the second, it is the trendthat environmental protection department is always raising the criterion of thenotion "environmental friendly corporations". Hence, the departmentwill always urge corporations to improve their equipment and cut downpollutions. As we can see, corporations with state-of-the-art equipment are likelynot to caring about those "new criterion" stuffs too much. On thecontrary, other firms will always update their pollution-eliminationtechniques, which will cost some accumulatively huge amount of money in thelong run. In conclusion, considering externalities that will be brought to theworld from them is always good for corporations given enough time.
In this sense, the two seemingly opposite positions in the statement areactually the same thing. The taking-responsibility side just tells the firm whatare they supposed to do in every time point, while the making-money side talksabout the goal of a corporation. Though firms may not able to make their endsmeet in the short run, when we think about how to make more money in the longrun, we'll find that the only way to do is just taking the responsibility ofminimizing the negative externalities to the society. | 
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发表于 2013-2-21 06:46:27
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