PEOPLE OVER PROFIT

 IELTS ESSAY TOPIC

Questıon:As well as making money, businesses also have social responsibilities. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

In today’s capitalistic economic system, businesses mainly tend to focus on making a profit and earning a lot of money from their work rather than ethical concerns. However, there is an important issue(that)most of them ignore: ‘corporate social responsibility’. This notion is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the work force and their families as well as the local community and society at large. I completely agree with the idea that businesses should do more for society than simply make money.

The social obligations that companies have cover a wide range of fields – from environment to health and to education. One primary focus of corporate social responsibility is the environment. Businesses have a large carbon footprint. Any steps they can take to reduce those footprints can be considered to be  a global environmental benefit. Besides, corporations should contribute to health issues. Unfortunately, lots of people in the world suffer from serious or even fatal ilnesses such as ‘leukaemia’, which is a type of cancer, and many charity organizations have been establishedin order to give a helping hand to these ill people, for example ‘American Cancer Society’ and ‘LÖSEV’ which is a charitable foundation giving aid to child cancer patients in Turkey. If firms make donations to these charities, they will represent a major form of corporate philanthrophy. Apart from these, it is an undeniable fact that education is an inseparable part of corporate social responsibility,too. In this sense, many projects carried out in Turkey can be mentioned in order to explain this matter. For example, the campaigns called ‘Dad, send me to school’ and ‘Let’s go to school, girls!’ are organized and funded by various firms or foundations and as consequences of these social responsibility projects, lots of children are encouraged  to receive an education and achieved gender parity in primary school education.

On the other hand,the social responsibility of business is to increase ıts profits. Namely, corporate social responsibility is also advantageous to firms due to the fact that social responsibility enterprises give credibility to the companies and raise brand recognition. As a matter of fact, these projects become an efficient form of promotion(an effective way to promote the company) after advertisements. Moreover, employees’ and clients’ commitments to the companies rise thanks to these initiatives and on the top of that, the companies will gain the public’s trust.

In conclusion, I believe that companies should place as much importance on their social reponsibilities as they do on their financial objectives.