“If the primary duty and concern of a corporation is to make money, then conflict is inevitable when the corporation must also acknowledge a duty to serve society.”
From your perspective, how accurate is the above statement? Support your position with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.


I think importance of profit to any corporation can be compared to importance of water or air to human body. Without water or air a human can survive for few day or few moments but then he will die. Profit has similar effect on a corporation. Without profit it becomes difficult for a business to maintain confidence of investors, pay bills and salaries of employees and also to stay ahead in competition. Eventually companies shut down if they are not having profit over some time. I agree with the quotation completely and think that conflict is inevitable when primary duty of a corporation is to earn profit.

First of all, equation of profit is expenses subtracted from total sells. Therefore in order to increase profit, companies have to either reduce expenses or increase total sells. In completely mathematical world, expenses can be reduced by paying less salary to employees, by not paying bills and taxes and by other unethical ways. On similar thoughts, total sells can be increased by increasing cost per product and selling more units. All these measures can be against the benefits of society. For example chemical companies are required to put different filters and cleaning equipments before they release chemicals in environment or foundries are required to remove poisonous components from the air they release. These kinds of equipment and processes are costly and they affect the profit of company.

I would also to put forward example of "Anti-monopoly law" in USA and Europe. In these regions if a company doesn't have competition then it has to pay heavy taxes and several implications are imposed on it. Governments of these regions think that if a company doesn't have a competition then it will sell its products at exorbitant rates. But if one thinks from the companies point of view, then it makes perfect sense to sell products at higher rate. After all company is producing those products with its own investment and man power and that company should have every right to earn more profit.

In short, profit is the first goal of every organization and if organizations go just for the profit then chances are that there will be conflicts with society. But I think these conflicts are importance and equal or in fact more consideration should be given to society's benefit.