Corporate Social Responsibility

We don’t mind horrific working conditions, as long as it is not happening to our work environment.

We don’t mind unfair wages, as long as we’re getting paid enough.

We don’t care if people die on their jobs, as long as they do not live in our country.

We don’t care at all, as long as we can still buy our laptops, cellphones or cheap clothing.


In this day and age, we need a thorough understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility. Especially in this time, where we, the future generation of business people, the one’s who make the world go round, will shape the earth, and all its inhabitants. When we do not condone ourselves to a global code, or at least an ethical standard concerning business practices, we lose our humanity.

This might seem a bit ideological, and it can be. It should be. For if there is not an ideology like this to reach for, what should it otherwise be? Money? Enlarging the wealth of shareholders? Those are good objects to strive for, but should not be the only goal. Too long corporations have had the excuse of ‘capitalism’ to extort, enslave, and destroy human lives. Of course, some might say that they also created live, increased welfare, brought knowledge to those who did not have, but those are not excuses to look away from the other side that some business practices might and do bring.

Everybody knows the practices of Apple. They make great products, meant for ‘everybody’ and should improve your life. Fewer people know about how those products are being made, and that not ‘everybody’ benefits from it. Intensive labour in factory’s as large as a small town, extremely low wages, suicides on the job, the list goes on. As Apple states it so beautifully in their Code of Conduct:

The Apple Supplier Code of Conduct requires suppliers to provide safe and healthy working conditions, to use fair hiring practices, to treat their workers with dignity and respect, and to adhere to environmentally responsible practices in manufacturing.

There goes your credibility, Apple.

On the other end, the LEGO Group thinks about it’s environment as Apple does, but actually does something instead of writing only nice sounding words that look great on paper. They and their parent company Kirkbi, are building a windmill park just of the shore from Germany. Not to power up their factories, but for "making a positive impact on the world".
Now that is what I’m talking about.

This is what doing business should be all about. Of course, the first and most important goal is to make money. Nothing wrong with that. But as a company, especially as large as LEGO or Apple, you leave a mark on your environment. Not only speaking about the impact on nature, but on people’s lives. And that’s a responsibility, as a company, you cannot walk away from. They owe it to them, and to the world, from the moment they had an idea of starting a venture.

Alas, the words written above are all so well known, and heard so many times before. And it is not up to me to convince you of ways to do business different, or better. But you should think about how, in the modern world, business is conducted. And if you can change certain aspects that will benefit to more people, other than the shareholders, do it.