"The Corporation" Movie Review

Hi everybody! We are a team of five girls: Alicja, Marina, Marta, Mia, and Tea; and we are studying at EFZG and taking Corporate Social Responsibility class.

In this blog we will talk about Corporate Social Responsibility and in this very first post, we will discuss our findings in the movie "The Corporation".

"The Corporation" is a Canadian documentary based on a book by Joel Bakan. It talks about history of a corporation and how it all started in 1712 with industrial age. The movie also talks how in the American law, a corporation used to be looked at as a legal person. They perceive the picture of corporation as something that has no moral conscious, but it just responds to stakeholders. They also state how in this capital world, there is no such thing as enough. There is never enough of money, they always want more, and they do not care what is the cost of that. They also compare corporations to sharks, and how they are like killing machines. One other thing that was mentioned in the movie is that if corporations were indeed observed as real people, they would be labeled as psychopaths. 

There are so many examples of big corporations and how they are making money, and it seems like not many of them are aware of corporate social responsibility. All of the corporations mentioned in the movie seem to be unaware of business ethics and environmental sustainability. In one part the movie talks about Monsanto corporation and how they are using antibiotics on cows, and although the research shows and proves how unhealthy that is, they are still producing it and selling it. 

There is one example of Pfizer corporation and its attempts of corporate social responsibility. They had a huge off the court settlement, where afterwards they decided to invest in one community and help with building of the houses and increase the safety of the local subway station. It is a nice attempt, however it also seems how Pfizer can use this in their marketing efforts to increase their sales. 

This documentary perceives a real picture of corporations and how real people and animals are effected, but it seems like their CEO's are unaware of the situations. For example, they say that Nike CEO never took the time to go visit their manufacturing facility. However, we believe that nobody should be pointing fingers and put a blame to a single person, yet corporations should put their efforts in showing their corporate social responsibility on a daily basis, and not just to make up for the horrible things that they have done. 

Here is the link to the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y888wVY5hzw

Thank you for reading!

Alicja, Marina, Marta, Mia, and Tea