The decision to “Do What is Right” or to “Do What is Profitable” is a decision many a corporate CEO has faced for the last century. As the government now recognizes corporations as if they were people, the decision to this question has a lot more scope of impact. (Smith, B 1990) Faced with a decision of this magnitude, what would a human person in their right and moral mind do in this type of situation? This is what corporate responsibility and higher ethics are all about.

To me corporate responsibility means that a corporation actually embraces the persona of being a person and as such does the thing that would be morally and ethically right. It’s like what would you do if your mother were watching and your decision impacted your family. When you make the decision makers at a corporation look at it from that personal perspective they can see how much less their fiduciary responsibility to make more money for the stock holders weighs in at this point.

In order to be a true citizen of the community a corporation has to treat people like neighbors and family. That means doing the thing that will allow it to look the neighbor in the eye the next day with a clear and clean mind and heart. This is the mindset of a socially responsible company that considers itself part of the community.

There have been many situations of late where companies supposedly acted socially responsible. General Motors in the ignition recalls of 2014, Toyota and the brake switch recalls of 2013 and Johnson & Johnson in 1982 the makers of Tylenol with the pill removal from the 80’s. All of these were “socially responsible acts” but in my opinion did not show corporate social responsibility because they were done weeks or months after the problem was identified and after a discussion about the PR aspects of the decision and which would provide the best image results. (Kaplan, T. 1998) Even though there were financial losses in each situation they were in reaction to a basic corporate situation the demanded to be handled. Now for me a socially responsible company is CVS Pharmacy Stores. Without any prompting and with full knowledge they would lose revenue they made the socially responsible decision to stop selling tobacco products in their stores. They know smoking can cause cancer and that nicotine can become very addictive, so they chose to not be an enabler for people struggling to quit and break the habit by having tobacco products on their shelves. If they remove the temptation then maybe it will help save a life or two and that is the socially responsible position they have taken.

If I were involved in the case study example as the CEO my decisions would be simple. (1) We have a product on the market that is causing our customers some unhealthy side effects. (2) It must stop, period! (3) Remove them from the stores and cease production because it is the morally right and ethical thing to do. I could look my mother or my neighbor in the eye and say I made the right decision. As regards the stockholders I could look them in the eye and say in lieu of profits I have given you the ability to be a part of the greater good in humanity which has its own reward profits. I would then terminate the corporate legal counsel or require him to revisit our corporate mission statement and vision statement as to the way we want to be seen by our clients. When people buy a product an assume the risk the risk they are assuming is that they will not get the desired results by using the product, not a risk that the product may come with some seriously unhealthly side effects that could lead to even greater health problems.