Day 2: Discussing "The Corpporation", sweatshops, living wage, stakeholders and social responsibility

Day 2

begin with discussing “the corporation”. I like to start with a general, “what did you think of the film?” question, just to get things started.

*most of the students “liked it”. when I asked them why, they gave some basic answers, “shows injustice”, “shows what happens/“dangers” when businesses get too greedy”.

I followed up with “what stories/parts of the film did you think was especially interesting or you learned something from?” replies:
-BGH (a couple of students were “really disgusted” by this. When I asked if this was a controversy in Panama, they said no. They hadn’t heard of it. Though one student was aware of that it was a controversy in Europe)
-news stories (“the investigators”) according to one student: “the news should be reported truthfully and not censored because of some company”.
-Kathie Lee Gifford and sweatshops
Kathie Lee was an interesting discussion. They didn’t know her background (former Miss America, former TV celebrity, product endorser). She endorses a line of clothes for Wal-Mart, she is a “brand” in and of herself. Does she think to ask the question about where the clothes come from? Can we blame her for that? Interesting division of opinion here (because I did describe her as a bright, independent woman) some felt that should have been smart enough to ask the question, or at least have someone find out the answer for her. Other students felt it was understandable to have missed this.

“living wage” came up. Baltimore has a living wage statute, one of several cities that does. note that it does not require every firm to pay a living wage, just those that have contracts with the city. This is also significantly higher than our minimum wage. I missed an opportunity to ask about minimum wages or a living wage in Panama.

also RE: sweatshops and Nike. I like to emphasize that Nike doesn’t own the factories and doesn’t employee the people, however Michael Moore’s comment about “Nike’s people” is a very good use of the word, a very important concept. These workers are, in a sense, a part of Nike. My experience at home is the same: students can get a little reckless about overstating Nike’s involvement with these factories (i.e. thinking and actually saying for example, “Nike runs (or manages) these factories/sweatshops”. Even though it’s important to separate Nike (and other apparel) companies from ownership, it remains important to think about these workers as part of “Nike’s people”. This point seems useful as we prepare to consider stakeholder claims and legitimacy.

Interestingly when I asked “was the film fair?” a few students quickly said, “no”, that the film didn’t provide much of the corporate response to its messages. We just had time for some general discussion here because I needed to move on. Now that I think about it, a good question to ask would have been “What would some of these companies, or an industry association, actually say about this movie?”

All that took almost an hour. Now I need to quickly present some material on stakeholder before we take a break. I like to ask students to help share info from the text, so I ask them the following questions (and to use the book, with specific page numbers!) to answer.

What is the definition of a stakeholder?
What are primary and secondary stakeholders? (definitions and then examples of each)
What are the elements of stakeholder salience?

(this is a pretty straightforward 20 minutes or so. They read (out loud) stuff from the book, sometimes I ask people to re-read it for emphasis. There’s an occasional story or point I make along the way. for instance the film the corporation might be an example of the media as stakeholder, and if enough people view it and act in a particular way, that’s a type of salience.)

After we return from a break I ask the students to pair up. I don’t often do this “back at home”, don’t know why, I just don’t. but a new environment and a new challenge makes me more open to try different things.

I ask them, in pairs, in 10 minutes to read the three stakeholder statements from Pfizer, General Mills and General Electric. What are the similarities and differences?

*After 10 minutes, they immediately begin pointing out similarities. The statements seem to use the same concept of “stakeholders”. The lists of stakeholders, while not identical are more similar than different.
*I asked them to pick out a word, or a phrase, from each statement that would really say what that statement was all about. for Pfizer it was “partnership” , for “General Mills” it was “trust”, for GE it was “growth”. Why these differences, why these words? The students seemed to agree that “health care” and “food” were somehow more intimate products, products and businesses that require care and respect more so that GE’s conglomerate portfolio of products.

*I will admit this pedagogy worked fairly well and I will probably try it again. It helps to use variety and keep as many people involved as possible.

We then used one of my favorite examples of stakeholder management. PETA and KFC. KFC has a presence down here, most students seemed to have heard of PETA.

I started with videos from PETA’s “kentucky fried cruelty” campaign website. This includes three videos showing “the Colonel” as a warden of a hellish prison with chickens as the prisoners. Those are mostly for fun and introduce the controversy. then there’s an undercover video of chickens’ being thrown, kicked and stomped on at a KFC supplier. Once the video was shown, before I could even ask any questions several of them said, “that could never happen in Panama”. The idea is that chicken farming is done on a smaller scale, and the automation/specialization/factory nature of chicken processing in the U.S. is not as common here. This was a good discussion.

I then asked “Does PETA have a. power? b. legitimacy? c. urgency?

There is always an interesting discussion about power and legitimacy back in the states. I was surprised and even a little impressed they quickly thought PETA should have a lot of power because once they get the message out, no one will want to buy chickens from KFC. My own experience suggests that students in the U.S. who are KFC customers don’t particularly care about the video: they know that between the raising of the chickens and the cooking comes the killing, and the killing isn’t pretty and they don’t really want to know and they don’t really care. This perspective seemed to surprise the students, at least some.

Upon reflection, this seems a more signficant point now than in the moment in class. Do these students “care” more, if not about the chickens, then something about the killing of the chickens? Is there more concern with animal rights here? It bears mentioning that chicken is a common meat in many Panamanian dishes.

A very good question came up about whether PETA was going after the wrong firm, that is, that KFC doesn’t operate chicken farms, they don’t “kill” chickens. There is a “social responsibility” website for KFC that does have a “supplier code of conduct” and “animal welfare” policies. There was just enough time before the second break to acknowledge that KFC at least has addressed this issue and has some material on its website. Whether this is “enough”, we can’t pursue, time to take another break.

We return from break 2 with just under an hour. Now the topic is “social responsibility”. Again, I ask someone to share the definition from the book, she reads it, the powerpoint follows, hopefully this sinks in.

then the Milton Friedman quote comes in. It was a nice plus that Friedman has a couple of segments in the corporation, so they can put a real person with a name. so we have the pros/con stuff set up.

now I show a you tube video, “can coffee drinkers save the rain forest?” It’s a nice 4 minute video, extolling the virtues of a “back to origin” campaign starbucks has in the chipas. I also asked, most students had been to a starbucks in the states. most already thought of starbucks as socially responsible. I asked why and they said the environment was the big issue. nothing specific however.

I then ask:


then I show a counter video: “Partners?” by a group called Justice Bean to Cup. The video criticizes Starbucks’ fair trade policy with a coffee cooperative in Ethiopia.

“I’m confused,” I say, “is Starbucks socially responsible or not?”

some thoughts from the class:

*”if you don’t want to sell your coffee for .57/pound to starbucks, sell it to someone else.”
*”maybe this is a tactic by starbucks competitors to make starbucks look bad”
*”starbucks buys coffee all over the world, what is happening in other places. you can’t judge the company by what happens in one place”
*”the growers are getting greedy!* (i found this an interesting comment, I didn’t want to attack it, but I did ask, do these coffee growers look greedy? do they look like the ones with power here?)

I didn’t press on them to compare Starbucks and its sourcing policies with Nike and the “sweatshop issue” because I really didn’t want to go back to sweatshops again. But there did seem to a common position among students that growing crops/farming is a different matter from working in a contractor’s factory. It may be that farmers are seen as more entrepreneurial, they produce a product and sell it. A young woman working in a “sweatshop” however is a laborer, and has much less voice about her wages, terms of employment, etc.

I concluded the day with the observation that companies that brag about their social responsibility (and starbucks is a good example here) increase stakeholder expectations. If you say you’re protecting the rainforest in the Chipas, then you destroying it (or failure to stop its destruction) in another part of the world will lead to a lot of questions.