Monday, 6 October 2014

Week 39 (2/2) - Development of position on Friedman proposition

Write down how materials provided and collected have led you to develop your position on the Friedman-proposition

I did not find his proposition convincing, either before nor after reading his statement. Friedman seemed to had neglected various aspects as well as the potential impacts created both within and beyond business network. The negative impacts from down cost measures could easily outweigh the benefits of generating higher profits. It seemed to me that running businesses which focus solely on cutting down the cost on all sides in order to create wider profit margin is unethical and irresponsible because not everything can be tagged with a price label.

Upon reading Friedman's proposition, I immediately related to the 14 Foxconn employees who committed suicide because of ill-treatment at workplace. It is true that the business impact of apple products can be calculated by the change in stock value and the product orders. But can personal wellness be valued in monetary terms? If a business entity successfully achieves profit growth continuously but treats its employees poorly and ignores employees' mental wellness, can the business be crowned with social responsibility fulfillment?
The CEO of Foxconn, Terry Guo
According to Friedman, business is not a person, therefore it does not have responsibilities. I agree that business is not a person. However, it is exactly because the business does not behave like a person that the business friendly decisions the from corporate leaders make are not friendly to people. It is often heard that the corporate leaders structures the operation so it can extract as many hours out of the labors as possible. In Taiwan, nearly 50 workers' death were blamed on working more overtime than legal standards in 2011. If business behaves more like people and shows humanity and kindness in the daily practice, wouldn't that be also demonstrating its value and fulfilling its responsibilities of taking take of their employees?
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1 comment:

  1. Unknown6 October 2014 at 23:08

    Dear Sho,

    Your blog starts with a strong introduction, which got me interested to read further. I really like the argument you make in the first paragraph: pointing at the negative impacts of businesses that cannot be tagged with a price label and are therefore not taken into account when a business calculates its profits. Noting the importance of certain impacts of companies that cannot be formulated in terms of money brings an important remark in the discussion on Friedman’s statement. Since business man always think everything has a price label, this insight should change their view on the profit they think to make and open their eyes for the impact they have on people and the environment.

    I personally agree with the your statement in the second paragraph, where you state that a business cannot ignore his employees’ wellness. However, one could argue that the personal wellness of a business’s employees is not the responsibility of that business. When employees are unhappy working there they should stop working there, the employees have the freedom to stop working at that business (they are not slaves). In that sense it can be argued that it is not the fault of the business that employees commit suicide, but of the people who kept holding on to the job even though they couldn’t mentally manage. What do you have to say on this insight?

    Lastly, I am afraid that I do not understand your last statement. Do you try to say that because a business is not a person, it should feel even more responsibility than a normal person? Or that because a business is not a person, its corporate leaders also pretend they can act like non-humans and ignore their social responsibility?

    I hope you can enlighten me a bit more, but overall I want to complement you on the blogpost. It is of a good and readable format and contains clear statements, with fitting real-life examples.

    Kind regards, Ilonka Marselis

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