corporations – Experiment: In Progress

A New Turn for Corporate Social Responsibility

Tiffany Tong

March 5^th, 2008

Introduction

The nature of corporations is to maximize the bottom line regardless of social and environmental consequences, because in an extremely competitive global market, failure to do so will result in forced exit from the market. Therefore, traditionally, the enforcement of rules has been viewed as the only way to protect society and the environment; voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been viewed as mere lip service that produces no results. However, in this paper, I will explore a new turn in the development of CSR, with a particular focus on a United Nations initiative named the Global Compact. I will argue that to effectively engage corporations to produce positive results, norm setting initiatives are necessary in addition to rule enforcement. Corporate Social Responsibility will not work unless we have both binding international agreements to enforce punishment of negative actions by corporations and positive incentives for innovation.

Tiffany Tong

April 7^th, 2008

Evil or Necessary Evil?

“Make a case for which “side” of the debate the film’s creators explicitly or implicitly adopt. Does the film succeed in offering enlightenment on some of the key issues involved in the debate? Why or why not?”

In “The Corporation,” it is argued that corporations are inherently evil because they are legally a person, yet they have no moral conscience for its actions. I argue that corporations should retain the best of its characteristics and change the other less desirable ones because while corporations can provide services with a level of efficiency and innovation that no other social institutions can match, they still remain a social institution.