Self-Serving or Not?
Will Fortune 500 companies ever get to the point where they promote, for example, healthy lifestyles, even if there isn’t any direct financial gain to themselves? Often times when corporations appear to be attempting to promote these “well-being causes”, they come across, at least to me, as being rather self-serving, i.e., getting the consumer to buy more of such-and-such a product which will solve some kind of problem, condition, or unmet needs state.
Here’s a quote that I found to be particularly relevant in this context….
“The negative ethic forbids certain actions; the positive ethic demands certain actions. ….If the negative ethic is one of decency, the positive one is the ethic of riskful, strenuous nobility.” — quote from an essay by Philip Hallie entitled “From Cruelty to Goodness” in the book “The Moral Life” by Louis P. Pojman
Maybe some day there will be some significant role-model companies that will put their economic impact behind a particular cause even if there are no self-serving financial rewards to be achieved by it…though I guess one could consider “goodwill” to be self-serving as well…somehow though, I don’t view Oprah Winfrey’s actions in that light.
