Ethical, Political and Social Issues in Business in The Corporation Movie

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Body
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

The Corporation is a documentary film released in 2003 that raises the publics attention to significant problems in the corporate sphere. The documentary is an adaptation of Joel Bakans book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, where the author discusses the historical background of corporations and their initial purpose. The book and the documentary emphasize how the government views corporations as individuals, as corporations predominantly function to pursue their interests. As corporate work implies a continuous search for more money and profit, in the process, the corporations cause different ethical, political, and social issues.

Body

First, one of the main issues discussed in the documentary is the nature of ethics in corporate culture and the fact that shareholders profit presents the primary interest for a corporation. The documentary suggests that corporations often make ethically incorrect decisions due to constant pressure to perform on a particular level and provide growing income to shareholders (The Corporation). The profit motivation and externality elements highlight the core ethical issues within the corporate functioning that are still relevant even twenty years after the events discussed in the documentary.

Furthermore, the ethical issue of corporations contributes to the creation of social issues through the negative outcomes of low wages and poor working conditions. The documentary features stories about how corporations maximize profits through the cheap labor of people in developing countries who resort to working in inhuman conditions to avoid hunger. Even though corporations are doing the right thing by offering jobs for people in developing countries, they rarely contribute to the regions overall development.

Moreover, instead of offering more opportunities for the development of workers in economically poor regions, corporations continue to use cheap labor for their benefit. Even though now, through increased media coverage, consumers have more information about manufacturing processes needed to support companies that use ethically correct labor, the issue of labor exploitation and underpayments are common in corporations. The issue of underpayments of wages is important as it contributes to the problem of social structure, where the rich population grows even richer, and the proportion of the poor population continues to rise.

Lastly, the documentary discusses the power of corporations and how corporations use different pressure levers such as marketing and brand loyalty to manipulate the population in their interests, similar to religions and churches. Moreover, the documentary explains how corporations power could extend to political spheres. Media corporations could interpret news in a way that favors their interests without the audiences knowledge. All news programs are privately owned and subjected to influence from the companys authorities, even though the journalism sphere generally implies an independent coverage of events. The issue is more apparent in modern society, where 59% to 61% of Americans express concerns about the medias objectivity (Meek). The lack of objectivity in the media presents an important issue that demonstrates the amount of power and control corporations have over society.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the only possible solution that will stop the corporations greed for money and limit the negative consequences of their activities is introducing a corporate-controlling laws system. By eliminating the priority of shareholders interest and introducing of restrictions system designed to consider all possible negative outcomes of corporations activities, the government could prevent the further growth of corporations. Moreover, the government should force the corporations to eliminate the negative outcomes they caused to the environment in the first place.

In addition, I assume that there is some progress in the way modern corporates now consider more aspects than shareholders interests and increase in profits. In the recent years, many corporations started implementation of programs on corporate responsibility and triple bottom line. However, I think that there is still much work that needs to be conducted in order to prevent further spread of corporations influence and their exploitation of labor and natural resources.

Works Cited

Meek, Andy. Fewer Americans Than Ever Before Trust the Mainstream Media. Forbes, 2021, Web.

The Corporation. Directed by Mark Achbar, and Jennifer Abbott, narrated by Mikela Jay, Big Picture Media Corporation, 2003.

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Ethical, Political and Social Issues in Business in The Corporation Movie

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