Some people believe that corporations have a responsibility to promote the well-being of the societies and environments in which they operate. Others believe that the only responsibility of corporations, provided they operate within the law, is to make as much money as possible.

The missions [ word form error (singular/plural) ] of corporations are a hotly debated issue. While some people argue corporations should be responsible for the environments [word form (plural form refer to specific rather than general environment)  ] and the well-beings [word form error  ] of the society, others contend that they [ unclear pronoun (corporations or others?) ] could and should maximize their profits regardless of the consequences. I believe the first position is more persuasive, [ punctuation error ] for the following reasons.

To being with [wrong phrase  ] , corporations cannot operate well if they are not supported by the society in which they operate. Corporations sell products and services, and it is (people in the societies) [ wordy/unclear ] that purchase them. Moreover, if people did not sell their labor power to corporations, then corporations cannot [ grammatical error/subjunctive ] have enough labor force to execute their daily activities. Suppose one day, the misbehaviors of corporations harm the society so much that people could barely make a living. At that time, corporations cannot sell their products and services and would make themselves bankrupt. Therefore, as society supports corporations to operate, corporations should also be responsible to the society in return.

A similar point can be made in terms of the environment. Corporations operate on lands and utilize natural resources such as water, and their employees need to live in a favorable environment in order to stay healthy. If corporations polluted the environment, then not only would they undermine the environment on which their operations are based, but they might also pose danger to their employees’ health. As a result, corporations might endanger their own basis of survival because they pursue profits at the expense of environmental sustainability.

Opponents to this view might argue that it is the role of the government, not corporations, to ensure societal and environmental sustainability. Corporations, they argue, should only maximize profits in order to facilitate economic development of a country. Two objections can be made here. First, the government relies on corporations to provide jobs and collect taxes. Therefore, the regulatory power of the government is limited because corporations wield large power in modern societies, and we could not expect the government to be capable of providing all the social goods that citizens need. Second, as I argue above, corporations should not make as much money as possible even for their own sake. The results of this behavior might result in long-term societal and environmental vulnerability, which undermines the very conditions that enable corporations to operate in the first place.

In sum, to maintain their basic operations, and to reckon with their social and environmental basis of their survival, corporations should take care of the consequences of their activities on the society and the environment. After all, corporations do not just operate on their own; they are embedded in the society and the environment. They should therefore advance the well-being of the whole society, protect the environment, and collaborate with others to pursue a better world in which we all live in.