Business’ have a tremendous amount of power to bring change, they have the resources in turns of wealth and assets, and more importantly a successful business will have a highly organized infrastructure to bring about change on a large scale. However, there is a problem, the whole purpose of a business is to generate a profit, and this would sometimes conflict with the desire to be socially responsible.
Take the Nestle water monopoly in Ethiopia for example. The lack of a funding by the government to provide the proper infrastructure needed for a clean water supply has given rise to a privatized water monopoly owned by nestle. This allows nestle to mark up the water prices, effectively turning clean water in certain parts of the country into a commodity, as many Ethiopians can no longer afford it. Examples like these gives us a glimpse of what happens when a company goes to far in its pursuit of profits. Its often difficult for business to find that middle ground of maximizing profits and being socially responsible, as business are also all about competition, if a company conducts unethical acts to get an edge in the market, its rival whom up until that point operated ethically will also have look for ways to equalize the playing field or risk falling behind. Luckily business do tend to devote parts of their profits to bring positive change to the community, the incentive however is often to create good publicity and in turn generate more profits. That is not to say it makes its charitable action meaningless as it still benefits the community.
I think ethical business practices can be encouraged with education, instead of hoping business become more socially responsible, education can force them to be. Proper ethics about business practices and global awareness should be promoted and taught to people at a young age. Business might not care about socially responsible but unethical business practices once exposed decreases consumer support. This becomes especially true with a well-educated consumer base. While this sounds like wishful thinking, I believe to tackle unethical business’, proper education should be the end-goal, however in the meanwhile government over-watch, NGO’s, the media and business themselves should do their part in stemming or exposing unethical business practices.
