The Corporation - Ethical Analysis

With advanced technology comes the globalization and moving businesses to third world countries from U.S. This movement caused the rate of unemployment to rise and people see themselves in struggle to take care of their families. These issue are the complex of corporations in America. After seeing the movie (The Corporation) based on the book written by Canadian Professor Joel Bakan, we see that corporations are institutions that creates great wealth and profit but in the other hand causes enormous and hidden harm to people. Corporation cannot be imprisoned for criminal activities. Corporations are not humans they are designed by law to be concerned only for their stockholders. This is the issues that we see in our modern society the rich

Corporate social responsibility is not going to solve the world’s problems. With that being said, corporate social responsibility is a way for companies to benefit themselves while also benefiting society. It allows companies to take small steps to make big differences in areas of need. Some may say that it is a bunch of “greenwashing” – the deceptive use of green marketing that promotes a misleading perception that a company’s policies, practices, products or services are environmentally friendly – but there is a call to action that inspires a company to get involved in the community (Kewalramani, Sobelsohn).

This essay will aim to investigate the ethical treatment of shareholders and workers in a traditional, capitalist corporation; The Ford Motor Company and compare and contrast the findings with the treatment of these stakeholders in the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation. The structure of this essay will be as follows; firstly the fundamental differences between the two contrasting organisations will be examined and how these differences impact the ethical treatment of the relevant stakeholders; secondly, the ethical treatment of shareholders in regards to corporate governance and the executive’s accountability and control will be investigated, and lastly, the ethical treatment of workers within the two contrasting organisations will be

The fundamental ideologies of a capitalist corporation can vary from company to company, but typically all have the same underlying purpose – to make a profit. Often, a business’ ideologies are expressed in the form of an organisational vision or mission statement – a simple statement demonstrating to the public, and reminding the employees, the goal of the organisation. These vision or mission statements usually look at the ‘bigger picture’ of what an organisation wants to achieve. Examples being:

Corporations can be large or small but they all have some sort of ethical impact on their employees, shareholders, customers, community, and surrounding environments. Richard DeGeorge writes, “We can speak of corporations having moral responsibilities to act in certain ways, and they are morally responsible for the consequences of their actions on people.” (p. 200). Large corporations are comprised of the board of directors, management, and their workers. They also deal with suppliers, customers, and have competitors. This essay will examine the moral responsibilities within a corporation.

A corporation is an artificial person established by the law. It nurses the same rights as humans contrariwise; they are not equally responsible for their actions. A corporation cannot face the same charges a human would: if illegal actions took place. Bakan illustrates the traits of a corporation to closely resemble the traits of a psychopathic individual human being. These traits are, but not limited to: “1) unconcern for others, 2) incapable of maintaining relationships, 3) disregard for others safety/health, 4) repeated lying, 5) incapable of experiencing guilt, and 6) failure to conform to social norms.” Therefore, executive’s means for earning high returns for shareholders can be seen as a trait of a psychopath. Yet, the corporation’s attributes are not based on the qualities of the executives outside of their careers. As Bakan would say, “the people who run corporations are, for the most part, good people, moral people.”

or so many years our society has been thinking of forming new creative and innovative businesses, which would be more environmental and customer friendly. Nowadays a large number of different companies follow the social, ethical, as well as moral consequences when it comes to their decision making. One of the relatively new concepts involving economic and social concerns is Corporate Social Responsibility. Many of us apply this approach not only at work, but also in everyday life without even recognizing.

A corporation is an artificial person established by the law. It nurses the same rights as humans contrariwise; they are not equally responsible for their actions. A corporation cannot face the same charges a human would, if illegal actions took place. Bakan illustrates the traits of a corporation to closely resemble the traits of a psychopathic individual human being. These traits are, but not limited to: “1) unconcern for others, 2) incapable of maintaining relationships, 3) disregard for others safety/health, 4) repeated lying, 5) incapable of experiencing guilt, and 6) failure to conform to social norms.” Therefore, executive’s means for earning high returns for shareholders can be seen as a trait of a psychopath. Yet, the corporation’s attributes are not based on the qualities of the executives outside of their careers. As Bakan would say, “the people who run corporations are, for the most part, good people, moral people.”

The purpose of this paper is to examine an ethical dilemma faced by a company who manufactures critical components for a pacemaker developer. The consequentialist ethical theory of utilitarianism will be used to evaluate the moral implications this company has in continuing further manufacturing for their pacemaker client. An overview of utilitarian ethics will be discussed, focused primarily around 17th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s ideas about ethics. His framework will be used to present factors that influence the transistor company’s business decision. Finally, the Utility Test and Common Good Test will be applied to the company’s predicament to help determine the correct ethical course of action for this

People always consider corporations as same as human, so if humans can be psychopath, then the corporations can also be psychopath. The 6 characteristics of the psychopath that applies to the corporations are callous unconcern for the feeling for others, incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness repeated lying and conning others for profit, incapability to experience guilt, and failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors (Jurkiewicz, 2012). Also, in the film, an economist said, “the corporation is a artificial and legal structure, but the people who are engaged in (stakeholders, employees, executives) have more responsibilities”.

In the film The Corporation it shows many examples of corporation taking advantages of various things as if it was psychopath destroying everything in its path. The Corporation we can see corporations building up countries by creating sweatshops, but once the communities becomes more stable and higher wages are being demanded, corporations than can leave the country to find poorer and a cheaper workforce. This creates a devastating effect to the workers increasing unemployment and more poverty. Not only are corporations creating poverty, but they are causing pollution in the air and water. Even administration or ceo are not fully aware of all the actions that are being taking place. In every corporations their are good apples, but an overwhelming

Corporate Social Responsibility is an important term that few know of. This term stands for everything that’s moral, from using less harmful chemicals in their products to protecting the rights of the workers and the society we live in. However, some companies do not live by this word. This, coupled with the massive amount of consumers buying their products, can cause a multitude of problems not only for the company workers, but to the world itself. As such, companies should become more aware of their effects on the world around them and change their moral responsibilities to treat their workers more humanely, protect the lives of the people in their towns, cities and countries and save the environment from further destruction and pollution.

Since corporations are not physical things or people, it is very easy for them to avoid any kind of trouble. Corporations have become great at passing on their externalities to the public. An externality is an expense of any kind, whether it is something such as environmental damage or forcing people in an area to pay money for something, that a corporation forces the public to pay for while they privatize all profits. Corporations being externalizing machines fit in very well with their psychopathic behavior. They externalize any cost to the public because they can and it helps them achieve their goal of making as much money as possible. A quote from Robert Monks puts it very well, he says “The corporation is an externalizing machine

In the “Birth” segment, the film shows how the modern corporation began from the rise of the industrial revolution in the United Kingdom and slowly spread to America. The film shows the early concepts of a legal business corporation began as a government-chartered institution to assist in specific public projects with specific stipulations and liabilities. Influenced by corporate and banking lawyers, the U.S. Supreme Court came down with several controversial decisions expanding the personhood status of a corporation. In the “A Legal ‘Person’” segment, the film shows how American corporations are allowed to legal operate as a person, having rights to purchase other businesses and shield investors and its management from losses and sanctions by the corporations’ actions. Since the United States legal system concluded that a corporation should be legally considered a “person,” the producers chose to psychoanalyze this person and formulate a diagnosis based on their behavior in the corporate world. And this is the central point of this film: the modern corporation is diagnosed as a psychopath since it numerous actions are amoral, deceitful, incapable of guilt and failure to conform to social norms and respect the law (Achbar, 2003) By having personhood status, the American corporation was allowed to grow and take advantage of expanding their markets domestically and ultimately into

The 2003 Canadian film documentary, The Corporation, is about the modern-day corporation. It critiques that it is considered to be a person, but since it has so many disregards to the human well-being and only cares about making as much money as possible, if it were an actual person it would be considered a psychopath.