I spend a lot of time discussing corporate social responsibility with my students, and it is a complex topic on which opinions are divided. Do corporations have an obligation to the wider society? Or simply to their shareholders? How should such responsibility be discharged? Are we right to be suspicious when corporations bang on about how “committed” they are to the community or the environment?
Joel Bakan’s excellent book, The Corporation, presents a credible argument for the corporation as a psychopath: its overriding, statutory responsibility to shareholders renders it incapable of sustaining longterm relationships, experiencing guilt, considering the harm its actions may cause others, and so on. But another characterisation, that of the corporation as paedophile, is equally apt. Like the paedophile, the corporation in late capitalism thinks of itself as the friend of those it seeks to exploit; it uses its unequal power relationship with communities and groups to manipulate them for its own ulterior motives - a paedophile might use a puppy and a van, but the corporation might use promises of community investment, codes of conduct on child labour, and so on. And, like the paedophile, the corporation sees nothing wrong in its conduct: doing well by doing good, as the CSR evangelists never tire of saying. If I’m a kid and some multi-billion dollar global corporation wants to be my friend, I know what to do.
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Like the paedophile, the state thinks of itself as the friend of those it seeks to control; it uses its unequal power relationship with communities and groups to manipulate them for its own ulterior motives - a paedophile might use a puppy and a van, but the state might use promises of “investment in the community”, codes of conduct global warming, and so on. And, like the paedophile, the state sees nothing wrong in its conduct: getting elected by doing good, as Jim Hacker might have said…
Oh, I see what you did there.
The concept os the Corporation as an intity is a smokescreen - the Corporation serves only as a cover for the three year cycle of Managing Directors who ultimately skim the cream off the top of all moneys made with obscene severence packages.
Paedophiles? Rapists.
PS excuse spilling mistakes - too much wine.
There might be a difference here: normal sociopaths have no capacity for empathy. They want your sandwich, so they knock you down, kill you, whatever it takes. Your injury can’t possibly mean anything to them. But corporate insanity might have taken it a bit further: they want to knock you down or kill you, because that’s how they chiefly get sandwiches. They feel if they’ve beaten you up, they probably got a sandwich out of it, even if there is no sandwich. This is where things get weird.
does that make bush et al abused or abusers?
Enablers
And, like the paedophile, the corporation sees nothing wrong in its conduct
Depends on the paedophile. Perhaps you should tighten the metaphor to “The Corporation as Gary Glitter”.
I consider the corporate model to be inherently sociopathic. There’s so much accumulated evidence to suggest that environmentalism and sustainability and humanist values generally bring more stability- and hence long term profit- to society but corporate policy tends to be diametrically opposed to such values.
Eg.
http://web.mit.edu/polisci/mpepp/Reports/eepup.PDF
According to corporate benefit legislation directors are prohibited by law from acting in the interest of anything other than profit. So corporate responsibility is the sham we all suspected it was. A mask behind which to perpetuate their sociopathy.
RRROOOWWWWWRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!
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