Corporate Responsibility, Personal Responsibility
Last night I attended a public viewing of The Corporation, a documentary focusing on Corporate social and environmental responsibility, or lack there of. Definitely a film worth seeing, if you haven’t already… Not only is the film put together in a comprehensive way, but it offers ideas for both corporations and individuals to start reversing our current unsustainable direction of environmental exploitation. YOU can make a difference. And, YOU can start now!
What am I going to do?... Well, the film begins by describing how corporate lawyers (in the 60s) got laws changed to recognize Corporations as legal persons, with all the rights of a legal person. A large part of the film is then devoted to describing what kind of (legal) person corporations tend to be. The case is made that Corporations exhibit extreme antisocial and aggressive behavior, with a lack of moral conscience. An individual characterized by this sort of personality would be described as a psychopath. Therefore, it is fair to say that most corporations have the personality profile of psychopaths. MY task will be to use my background psychology, to see if I can learn to “treat” this behavior: make CEOs more aware, get them motivated for change, etc. Specifically, I will start looking at programs in this area, and see if anyone is already doing this kind of work. At bare minimum, perhaps I can do a comprehensive project that addresses these issues.
posted by Cosd @ 11:46 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Unfortunately, in the human-realm, treating psychopaths has not been very successful. Treatment has been shown to actually make them worse.
Kudos to you Josh! For (1) Actually watching the Coporation (I think everyone should see it) and (2) Feeling you should do more to make a difference.
While the narrative employed The Corporation uses clinicalesque diagnoses, the viable treatment is not likely to parallel that used for human psychopaths.
I guess one could try to argue about treating the system from within is similar to using medication on psyhopaths, but one can't very well suggest removing corporation from the general population (as desirable as that might be for some of them).
As we talked about, find a way to same them money and the don't care.
Go for it! :)
The thing is that CEOs, even the ones who believe in reducing their company's environmental footprint, don't actually have all that much control over what goes on at the company's grassroots. What we need is a change in the mindset of our entire society, not just the CEOs of corporations.
Good point Raja. So where do you recommend we start?
Anonymous, yes, Darren also brought this up is conversation (that therapy actually teaches psychopaths to be better psychopaths).
I guess Corporations can be said to do the same thing -- using psychology for 'evil' (e.g. creating better advertising, fixing public relations, etc.).
Well, first we need to wait until all of the grownups retire, since they don't seem to be interested in changing their minds. :P
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