The 's Margin Call From The End Of The Day Essay

In the corporate setting, capitalism plays an important role in the sense that it helps ensure that the decisions made by leaders, such as the CEOs, take into consideration the company’s or stockholders’ interest in gaining profit (Peñaloza & Barnhart, 2011). This implies that it compels business leaders to make decisions that minimize loses while increasing the profitability of the firm. In most occasions, this is accomplished through the application of the utilitarian and Kantian approach to decision-making. However, it’s important to note that the central implication of public capitalism is that of helping foster corporate decision-making based on the broader effort to promote the public good (Peñaloza & Barnhart, 2011).

Because corporations are established to profit and shareholders invest money with expectations of a greater return, managers cannot be given a directive to be “socially responsible” without providing specific criteria of checks and balances to which needs to adhere. Therefore, it is imperative to the success of a corporation for managers to not act solely but rather to act within the policies of the shareholders.

He explains that all persons and environments require resources from the company impacting them, thus justifying that the community, employees, and customers should receive a share of business resources in the reader’s mind. Also, he summarizes an opposing view that “caring about customers and employees is good business” to get readers to be more willing to accept that corporations should fulfill social responsibilities, not just the individual. To address critics of his argument, maybe thinking that 100% of profits should go back into the community, he says that he believes investors do deserve some profits, but giving 0% to society is too little. The foot-in-the-door phenomenon explains his use common ground here, which gets readers to think or act selflessly a little bit to get them more accepting of bigger

The company that I chose to analyze is Tootsie Roll. Throughout my life I have always had somewhat of a sweet tooth and have been very intrigued in the process of business. Now I have the opportunity to look further into such a great company such as Tootsie Roll and really find out how the business is run and what type of work is invested in such a well known business.

There are many different ways to save money and there are different things to save for. A savings plan for an immediate want is apparently different than a savings strategy for retirement. One may choose to select stocks, bonds, or mutual funds for a savings strategy, however, my personal choice is to invest in bonds first, then mutual funds.

American retailer Kohl’s has become a prevalent fixture for the purchase of discounted clothing and home goods in the mid-west for over twenty-five years. The history of the company however has roots much more modest than present day market dominance would suggest. Dating back to a Wisconsin supermarket in 1946, founder Max Kohl grew his small business to the most successful chain of supermarkets in the Milwaukee area (12). By 1962 Kohl opened his first department store in Brookfield, Wisconsin where an eclectic selection of merchandise, from sporting goods, motor oil and candy, was sold (11). In 1972, the Kohl’s Company which by then consisted of 50 grocery stores, six department stores, three drug

In the book, The Corporation Joel Bakan presents arguments, that corporations are nothing but institutional pathological psychopaths that are “a dangerous possessor of the great power it wields over people and societies.” Their main responsibility is maximizing profit for their stockholders and ignoring the means to achieve this goal, portrays them as “psychopathic.” Bakan argues that, corporations are psychopaths, corporate social responsibility is illegal, and that corporations are able to manipulate anyone, even the government.

We will look at the Enron Corporation and discuss its application of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or in actuality its irresponsible behavior as related to social responsibility. We will revisit what CSR is and discuss Enron’s philosophy regarding its use and function within the corporation. We will discuss the consequences of Enron’s irresponsible behavior and the far reaching effects it had on society.

Enron was named the most admired company for six years in a row, and it was widely considered one of the best companies to work for by Fortune magazine. Enron shocked the world, and it's stockholders when it was revealed at the end of 2001 that the company’s “reported financial condition was sustained substantially by institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud”. (Enron, 2011, para. 1) Enron maximized it’s long-run profits for itself, but not within the limits of the law. Enron disregarded it’s social responsibility to it’s stackholders when the company only strive for it’s maximized profits, and didn’t strive

In the wake of the recent financial crisis, many commentators attempted to analyze the roots of the conflict from a political or economic perspective. Anthropologist Karen Ho, a veteran of Wall Street as well as an academic, attempted to understand the reason that Wall Street behaves the way it does in her 2009 anthropological study of American finance entitled Liquidated: An ethnography of Wall Street from a cultural perspective. The central paradox with which Ho begins her book is: " the economy experienced not only record corporate profits and the longest rising stock market ever, but also record downsizings," further concentrating the wealth in America (Ho 2009: 1-2). But how can corporations grow richer as the American public as a whole grows poorer? Corporations no longer view themselves as responsible for taking care of their employees, creating good products, or serving their original mission. Instead, the focus is on generating shareholder wealth (Ho 2009:3). Shareholders, not the larger public, have become the symbolic and real focus of firm strategy. The shareholder "symbolized and 'stood in' for the whole of the corporation and became the sole locus of concern and analysis" during the time Ho conducted her study in the late 1990s and continues to this day (Ho 2009:175)

Milton Friedman wrote in his famous 1970’s article in The New York Times Magazine, that “the one and only social responsibility of business, is to increase profits for shareholders.” Milton Friedman's view on business responsibility accentuates the importance of maximizing firm's value. He pointed that the “there is one and only one social responsibility of business –to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engaged in open and free completion without deception or fraud’’ and by taking on the burden of social cost, the business becomes less efficient (Milton Friedman, 1962).

Is the deception of consumers worth making a profit? The Ford Pinto, popular car of the 1970s, made a profit off of a vehicle that endangered the lives of hundreds of people. In his essay “Pinto Madness” Mark Dowie, author and Pulitzer Prize nominee, exposed the unethical decisions made by Ford Motor Company. When it came to their customer’s safety and profit for the company, Ford made a decision that led to consequences their customers had to pay the price for. Should the business be held accountable for these actions? In his essay “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profit” Milton Friedman, powerful economist, discusses what a business should prioritize in the economic system. Friedman declares what a business is responsible for and the guidelines they must follow. Due to Friedman’s view, he would not have condoned the actions and decisions that the executives at Ford Motor Company took.

Exxon-Mobil is the world’s largest privately owned multi-national oil and gas company (Skjaerseth 2003). For companies as large as ExxonMobil, which possess considerable capital resources and are able to exert considerable power and influence, society is increasingly demanding that they behave in a socially responsible manner (Diara, Alilo, and McGuire 2004). There is a growing expectation that companies will adopt a business approach that illustrates responsibility to society above and beyond the economic function and legal performance of the firm (Gibbs 2009). This expectation can be understood as an implicit social contract. One of the underlying

Most importantly, markets gain interest based on various reasons where some include the core questions of social and political elements. However, questions emerge regarding the occurrence of market failures; the term “factors” is attributed to the various types of market failures. This paper will focus on answering these questions with in-depth emphasis on defining market failures as well as their various types (Keech and Munger 6). Additionally, it will help in determining how market failures pose a problem for the utilitarian defense of the economic theory of corporate social

A multitude of choices made by executives at WorldCom led to the ultimate demise of the company as it was previously known, the employees and their livelihoods’, and the trust of the American people. In a time when corporations fail to set ethical standards and provide transparency to investors, how do we change corporate culture on a national level? By analyzing choices made to improve stock prices and company image that ultimately result in failure-- we can guide