Corporate Sponsored Education: The Limits Of Social Responsibility
ABSTRACT: The business sector increasingly subsidizes financially challenged institutions. Representative examples would include health care, major sports arenas, and penal facilities. Among the recent beneficiaries of corporate largesse are schools. Such assistance blurs social roles and raises serious moral concerns, especially those of moral agency. Education, more so than other social institutions, determines the kind of citizen and moral character a person can become. Put differently, education operates on virtue development that may override the fiscal logic of profit-maximization practiced by corporations. In this paper I argue that whatever benefit received by struggling schools is short-lived by comparison to the long range influence achieved by a corporation via advertisements that affect the psychological preferences of children. I contend that this makes the exchange unfair insofar as it violates the autonomy of the student. Education should provide a free and open atmosphere in which critical points of view are discussed. If corporations are permitted untrammeled access to schools, social views may become one-dimensional. Economic salvation would effectively trade on the moral failure of schools.
The familiar debate over corporate social responsibility draws against the classical view of Milton Friedman that the sole responsibility of corporations is to its stockholders. This narrow view eschews corporate social responsibility for the maximization of profits whereby society would be the indirect beneficiary of market capitalism. In contrast, the broader view held by Richard DeGeorge, Tom Donaldson, and Norman Bowie argue that corporations have...
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(3) David Brewster. Weekly Washington, p. 6, 1997.
(4) Alex Molnar, p. 66.
(5) D. Stead. New York Times, January 5, 1997, p. 33.
(6) John Kenneth Galbraith. "The Dependence Effect," in Beauchamp and Bowie, p. 500.
(7) Robert Arrington. "Advertising and Behavior Control." In Business Ethics, (Ed.) Thomas I. White. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1993) p. 578.
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(9) Richard L. Lippke. "Advertising and the Social Conditions of Autonomy." In Thomas I. White, p. 586.
(10) See Lynn Sharp Paine. "Children as Consumers: An Ethical Evaluation of Children's Television Advertising." In Thomas I. White, p. 619.
(11) Ibid., p. 622.
(12) Ibid., p. 623.
(13) P. Applebome. New York Times, March 16, 1997, p. E5.
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One of the most controversial topics in the United States in recent years has been the route which should be undertaken in overhauling the healthcare system for the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured. It is important to note that the goal of the Affordable Care Act is to make healthcare affordable; it provides low-cost, government-subsidized insurance options through the State Health Insurance Marketplace (Amadeo 1). Our current president, Barack Obama, made it one of his goals to bring healthcare to all Americans through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. This plan, which has been termed “Obamacare”, has come under scrutiny from many Americans, but has also received a large amount of support in turn for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons include a decrease in insurance discrimination on the basis of health or gender and affordable healthcare coverage for the millions of uninsured. The opposition to this act has cited increased costs and debt accumulation, a reduction in employer healthcare coverage options, as well as a penalization of those already using private healthcare insurance.
Ghosh, C. (2013). Affordable Care Act: Strategies to Tame the Future. Physician Executive, 39(6), 68-70.
Many companies spend over millions of dollars advertising every year, and these advertisements influence how an individual thinks and acts in a society. It becomes a significant aspect of our lives whether it has come to our acknowledgment or not. It influences us to the extent we believe the information presented in the media are “normal”. To be precise, advertisements create and define the social norms. These concepts are strongly built into my mind since a young age, especially the gender roles between men and women.
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The problem that was investigated consisted of a question that Milton Friedman posed in one of his articles, which was featured in The New York Times Magazine in 1970. The question was, “What does it mean to say that “business” has responsibilities” (Friedman, 2007, p. 173)? Friedman (1970) elaborated on how businesses cannot have assigned responsibilities. Furthermore, he described how groups or individuals should be the only ones that can hold responsibilities, not businesses. He stated that associating responsibilities with the word business is too ambiguous. I will examine three discussion questions and three compare and contrast questions which Jennings (2009) posed in a case study that is related to Friedman’s (1970) article “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”.
O'Neill, Charles A. "The Language of Advertising." The Contemporary Reader. By Gary Goshgarian. 9th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. 146-52. Print.
Advertising is so prominent in American culture, and even the world at large, that this media form becomes reflective of the values and expectations of the nation’s society at large.
Goodrum, Charles and Dalrymple, Helen, Advertising in America: The First 200 Years. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1990). 37.
Rushkoff, Douglas. "Chapter Five: Advertising." Coercion: why we listen to what "they" say. New York: Riverhead, 1999. 162-192. Print.
The United States has come to a point where a person cannot go for very long without being greeted with some sort of advertisement. Advertisements are everywhere, no matter how secluded of a life someone may live. They appear on most web pages of the Internet, show up on cellphones during applications, and are plastered along roadways. It has become second nature for most people to tune out the advertisements that are thrown in their faces at practically every turn. Our country is especially ridden with advertisements compared to others, as it has become a multi-billion industry for the country. Fueled by a materialistic frame of mind, the population’s desire for the latest product keeps the advertising field thriving.
4 Giancola, J.K., Grawitch, M.J., and Borchert, D. (2009). Dealing with the stress of college: A
Gay and lesbian unions have been for a long time a subject that no one liked to discuss. For the last few decades, gays and lesbians have come out and expressed their sexuality preferences. Many believe that same sex marriage should not be legalized because it's against the moral. It's against the definition of marriage, which is considered as the union of a man and a woman as a husband and wife. Same sex marriage should be legalized because the way society views the union of lesbian and gays can a change. Another reason why same sex marriage should be legalized is that children that are issued from a gay or lesbian couple will be loved and raised in a family that is legally recognized under the law. Lesbians and gays also deserve to have the same rights as heterosexuals.