Short question:

Is there such thing as "Corporate Responsibility", and if so, what does it entail?

Responsibility to make money for investors.

That's it.

Well, actually, I guess you could say they're also obligated to follow the law of the land, though I'm not sure I'd term that a "responsibility".

Yeah, I'd go with stake-holders and law of the land as well.

I'd like to think that corporations take part in some sense of corporate social responsibility as well, but I personally struggle with the idea of ethical obligation.

Kant would argue "yes"--a corporation is no different from a person, and corporations have ethical obligations to the societies in which they operate.

But I am not sure that ethics should be mandated or obliged, and hence it's hard for me to say that a corporation has some sort of social "responsibility."

Why? Why do you feel it shouldn't be obligated or mandated?

That would be a question for another thread.

But in terms of corporate social responsibility, I definitely don't think something like that should be legislated.

However, practices that are "responsible" to society are often profitable. If a particular corporation can market its socially responsible practices well, it may attract more business and increase customer loyalty.

I'll agree, corporations have similiar responsibilities to what individuals do. If a company chooses to be prejudiced in regards to employment, that isn't seen by me as responsible practices. Hence, laws must be passed to insure that companies are held "responsible" for doing what they should.

A movie called North Country touches on employees and/or management attitude towards a certain person. How much of that is the company responsible in handling? You can't dictate people's behaviour... but simply ignoring it or even making comments that it's within their exercisible rights, then it's almost like promoting it.

If memory serves, it was J.C. Penney or another store that was accused of firing people within a few months of their mandatory retirement date. In one case, the person worked there for decades. If it was a cost-saving measure to fire them before they had to pay benefits, that's clearly not responsible behaviour by management within a corporation. The corporation might have had all kinds of documentation to support the past employee's work history. Sure, they may have been fully legal in finding grounds for termination, but that doesn't mean they've fired all of the guilty parties... but applied by injudiciously.

When people age, their mental and physical capacities diminish. Saying a person isn't peforming their duties based upon age need to be of a greater degree beyond what is resonably expected, with all health considerations considered. Health problems means more days missed from work. That doesn't warrant as grounds. Yet letting it slide for such a period of time to get the most "usefulness" out of a person so you could fire them just prior to retirement is a perfect example of an "irresponsible cooporation". They reward a good (or perhaps great) employee that remained loyal to their employers throughout so much of their "capable" adult lives.

Someone like L.P. will probably explain that this is exactly what companies should do. Yet if his destined career path doesn't work out... and heaven-forbid that he'd end up a manual labourer or some other entry-level position, wonder how it would feel for him to come to realize this scenario as the victim? He could even point out that the person should have "saved" for the worst-case scenario. Let's not forget, all other worse-case scenarios came up during life' journey... like putting kids through college, paying for braces, car accidents not covered by insurance, unanticipated damages caused by bad weather... and it's all on the labourer's shoulders to make sure they have a retirement plan in place, even though companies use that to draw employees to their ranks?

If a company fails to pay back-wages, a person has to sue to get them? If a person is wrongfully terminated or laid-off, they have to present their case to draw unemployment? If a person has unknowingly been forced to work while due the right to "emergency" leave or due compensation time in return, but gets neither, has what options?

So great employees ultimately suffer for their timeliness, lost vacation/sick days, working when they should have been with family, putting in hours on-call during holidays when the regular paid employees screw up or can't handle it? And in the end, they are rewarded by given their "walking papers"?

Corporations love a scape-goat. If there is inventory shrinkage, you can bet someone will be fired. Because if the sacrificial lamb is offered up, they might be able to save their own job. It doesn't matter if the lamb bleated out loud and often that there was a problem with this... that procedures or practices need to change. And then there is the suggestion box where time or money-saving ideas get a person a "tiny" reward that saves thousands to multiples of this?

Doing your job shouldn't include playing office politics. Raises shouldn't be based upon riding coat-tails. Promotions should be awarded to the person that could perform the job the best... though that can be tricky.

Some companies instill policies like "no family members hired".. yet to hire the spouses or half-brothers/half-sisters. Vague policies are created to leave the protection of ambiguity. Unwritten policies exist as a legal avoidance. It's a "way out" of harrassment or keeping problematic employees. Why put it on paper when you can affect the response of employees by intimidation or insuation.

Environmentally responsible? Ha, most never even consider it. Socially responsible? Hmmm, wonder how many elderly people are hired because some programs co-pay the salaries or get the company some tax-breaks. If it weren't for O.S.H.A. and local civic inspectors, companies would sometimes allow buildings to fall around worker's ears. They wouldn't install expensive fire sprinklers or move to a new asbestos-free facility. And if no one complains or makes an issue of it, it continues for years. How many child-labourers would there be now if it weren't for laws mandating a certain age. Even then, those are broken, just like using illegal immigrants breaks them.

New Orleans is fixing to be built, by an influx of illegal workers... because they are cheaper for various reasons. One, they are told they aren't full time employees, when they are. Two, no with-holding is needed. Three, you can hire them cheaper than minimum wage by calling them sub-contract. Four, you go out and hire more if someone doesn't show up. Five, since they are illegal, they have no protection by law against the many wrongs forced upon them. Is this responsible behaviour?

For crab-fisherman out in the Bering Strait, they know of the risks before hand. For people working on oil rigs or crude super-tankers, they know there's a chance of explosion or fire.. of bad weather.. of local unrest or hostile populations. Most companies can't be that upfront about the risks involved, because they might not be able to fully staff.

Window-washers for high-rise buildings can't get life-insurance. Contractors in Iraq can't get health-coverage or life-insurance sometimes. Car insurance companies wouldn't cover high-risk drivers if it wasn't forced upon them by the state boards, which made it mandatory to have the car insurance in the first place at the instance of car-insurance lobbyists. Refusing to bond people will keep people from being hired for certain types of work. Technically, you can't go out and cut a tree down in someone's yard without being bonded. And people complain it's hundreds of dollars to cut down a small-trunked tree.

Unions are needed to insure people aren't replaced in majour industries. Assembly plants would turn over workers every few years, just to avoid raises. More and more work is being sub-contracted, because it's easier to hire a temp-firm at $21 per hour per employee, versus actually processing a $12 an-hour employee with all the benefits and eventual liabilities/costs. You can always send the temp home. Let's not mentin that these temp agencies aren't far from being legalized slavery. They get the $19 to $21 per hour per person, while paying them $6-$10 per hour AND not having to provide insurance or being "responsible" for ending their work.

Let's talk about debt. Companies sell it off for pennies on the dollar. The contracts, or notes, are sent off to collection agencies which use various tactics to influence the debtors. And if the person actually pays off the debt, the original company and/or collection agency comes after interest on the debt??

How many workers in convienance stations/stores have to pay the amount owed for "drive-offs"? If you aren't familiar with the term, that's a customer that fills up with gasoline and then drives off without paying. Mind you, these poor saps working double-shifts sometimes to make any money can't afford to pay for a couple of these per week at the minimum wage levels or slightly better. Keep that in mind if you accidentally drive off without paying. And what is the poor clerk supposed to do? Leave a line of customers in the store with an unprotected cash register to rush out after a car pulling away.. even to get a license plate number? C'mon, get real.

Companies will dump waste or trash illegally. They will hire companies that they know aren't legal. Wal-Mart was rumoured to have 10,000 or more employees that were illegals. They already have questionable practices like "clean-ups" off the clock... or splitting a shift to avoid holiday's double-time pay. If I worked a typical night shift, do I really want to work until midnight on Christmas Eve to go home and spend a few hours before going back to bed to work at 12:30 am the following night? Let's not touch on the amount of inventory shrinkage that they allow, because of their problematic legal liability to wrongfully accuse someone, but to use as an excuse later to deny bonuses to employes and lower-level management.... especially when top executives have no problems receiving their expected bonuses or more.

Most people don't know what is considered as mandated "overtime". They don't realize it's beyond so many hours a day, not just a week. They don't realize that the Emergency Family Medical Leave protects them from being fired for rushing to someone's beside in the immediate family. Yet we have to pass laws to make sure this doesn't happen... because many corporations refuse to act responsibly. So I don't want to hear about companies burdened by too much government, when they can't even govern themselves.

The problem is that you expect them to provide these services when it's not in their interest. You talk about OSHA, Unions, inspectors, these are all good things. Corporations exist to make a profit, if you want them to do anything else, it will take outside intervention.

Right, and that's the beauty of a democracy and a capitalist system. Corporations by their nature are out to make profit, not to break even or to simply help humanity (although that may also be a function). So yes, corporations will do things like lay-off workers pre-maturely, or pay the lowest possible wages it can afford to get away with. That's the nature of the beast.

Part of the beauty of that system, however, is that the customer or the worker DOES have legal or economic recourse, even if it is through lawsuits.

No matter how you cut it, there will ALWAYS be conflicts between various stakeholders (a corporations investors vs. its employees, for example). However, capitalism, combined with democracy, allows various stakeholders other avenues to fight for what they want, whether it's by seeking legal recourse in the form of a lawsuit or seeking political/economic recourse in the form of joining a union.

What makes a corporation different than a single person?

To whom is that question directed?

Everyone.

Legally, not too much. It can sue or be sued, it can go bankrupt, etc. It operates as a single entity in the economy and in the legal system.

Other than that, a corporation is a collection of people, while an individual is just one.

Corporations are legal entities because that makes doing business easier. But that's the only thing they have in common with an individual human being.

A big difference in a direct comparision is that the corporation was created as a shield to individual responsibility, otherwise they are both considered entities with the same legal rights as some priorly mentioned.

You're absolutely right! This INCLUDES obeying the law. If you want them to obey it, you have to closely monitor and regulate. Otherwise, you'd pay outrageous costs for energy bills because of monopolies and possibly not be able to purchase insurances.

Sure, there are always recourses, but we don't want people going postal, just because unions don't exist in their industries or legal recourse means spending thousands of dollars while going against those able to bankroll millions in attorney fees.

-----

The system is flawed. Yes, with democracy and capitalism, we have many better options and standards of living. We tout some of the best conditions known. But we are also showing our weaknesses. Social Security isn't going to be there, unless a majour plan to save it comes up in the works. Corporations don't want to foot the bill, because of the all-important [profit] picture in the next quarter or the current year. If a person doesn't have S.S. to fall back on, if corporations deceive their 401K investors, if an I.R.A. has to be cashed in to pay for emergency medical costs because an existing health coverage finds a loophole, there isn't a retirement package. So in the end, these corporations and everyone involved is going to pay the costs of housing, feeding and tending... as well as a larger problem with crime.

The people making the most money in corporations won't speak out against them because it affects their own income, their family's livelihood. A company will make a blanket policy that raises will only be 4% for the entire company. That majourly sucks on the low pay-scale because inflation pretty well chewed that up. On the upper middle management, a six-figure income is looking at $4,000 instead of the near poverty level income of minimum wage which is less than a fourth of that amount... while the top executives "elect" to give themselves five- or six-figure bonuses and still getting the 4% increase. And the raises aren't given to everyone on the lower-end of the scale!

The reason things serious breakdown are because they seem to be running fine. The car engine never locks up because you're expecting it to do so. You've already realized the danger and dealt with it... or your sure to stay close to home or have emergency backup like AAA.

One day, the United States will be dealing with issues like Canada... where the quality people leave to find the big money. Or have new issues like Southeast Asia, with child-labourers simply so we could compete. It's a situation where we pay now or pay later. And paying attention now is a lot better than slapping a band-aid on it and saying it's fine.

So keep advocating that corporations should ONLY focus on profit... that they shouldn't have a moral conscience or social responsibility. Sure, I'm fine with the basic theories of economics and business matters. But if you reduce it to making decisions based upon money instead of everything else, then you're going to find a moral morass so deep that the Middle-Eastern thinking had been right all along.. that a person's rights has no value in the face of decadent greed... because it's expendable where wealth isn't.

Yes.

We've gotten to where we are now with these principles.

As a person who's been laid off, worked for minimum wage, and nickel and dimed I know the system is failing. However I completely disagree with Rancer.

Another good example came out when talking with Mom.

A law had to be passed to insure peanuts were used in the making of peanut butter. How's that for corporate responsibility??

I didn't know you could make peanut butter without peanuts. I see no reason that it should be illegal to do so if you can.

meh, besides false advertising nothing. Basically they'll get sued for calling it peanut butter implying there are peanuts in it and then when people find out there aren't a class action suit would ensue.

Does it matter? If it looks, smells and tastes like peanut butter will you even care? What about people with peanut allergies?

But its not unreasonable for the consumer to expect that it be clearly labeled as artificial.

Corporations are things. Legal consensual contracts. They do not cry. They do not feel emotions. They declare no loyalty except to their own growth. They do not sacrifice their lives so that others may live, the most noble of humanity's deeds. Even animals will do this to protect their young in nature. They merge to grow larger. They do not pray to any god. There's no acknowledged corporate afterlife among humanity. They are soulless where most humanity believes they have a soul & possible afterlife.

A corporation is a tool of humanity. It is not alive. It may similate life as it is overly acknowledged by the courts to being a living entity, but its not alive. Its closest resemblance to living organisms would be predatory parasites. It feeds off of people & the environment.

Oh and people have a responsibility to regulate and control corporations. Its not a cars fault it has an irresponsible driver. Is it the hammers fault that the user swung, missed the nail, & hit his thumb? A corporation is a human creation therefore its humanitys responsibility to control. Whether we abdicate that to the government or to the members of the corporate contract or a mix there of; it is humanity's responsibity to control the corporation. But we seem to be stupidly confusing the process with semantics and rhetoric.