The starting point of Milton Friedman’s argument critiquing CSR is the fact that business executives act as the trustees of the corporate owners; they have not been hired by society or stakeholder groups, but are the firm owners’ agents that manage the day-to-day operations of the business for the benefit and in the interest of the owners. Friedman’s premise is a principled insistence on shareholder primacy. In other words, putting shareholders, or the firm owners, first is not an abrogation of moral responsibility in capitalist economies, but an affirmation of it. Do you agree with this statement? If so, why? If not, why not?
Peloton, the Smart Fitness equipment brand was in a mission to sell workout subscribtion by selling equipments. However, its business is being in tail wind since last year. The stock price has dropped from $162 all time high in December 2020 to current $7, and since then the funder CEO has stepped down, as well as some other top executives, the current CEO Barry McCarthy, who was a prominent executive with many years experience from Spotfy and Netflix, is trying to turn the company around to a profitbale business in the near future.
Below are links on CNBC for some major steps he is working on to reach the goal that he was hired for by the board.
Read the Peloton’s reports above ( you are welcome to seach and read more about its business affairs), also try to look at its key finanicals from google finance or Yahoo finance to have some ideas about the overall change of its ROA , ROE and other key ratios to know the company better (You have studied how to read financial ratios, its time to use it now)
After familar with what is going with Peloton, please make some discussions about this company’s steps toward cost structure and business strategic changes. Please make sure you connect your discussion with the 4 Modules we have covered for the Exam II.
Hint: You may want to approach this discussion by talking about on why they took these steps and what are the pros and cons by doing such movements, do you agree or disagree for what they are doing now, and why.
As your text explains, Plato is considered the father of political science. Within The Republic, he presents his theories on the foundations of a perfect government. Rather than a theoretical examination of government, The Republic is written in story form, as the main character Socrates explores the ideal way to form a city.
A largely studied portion of The Republic deals with Plato’s cave allegory. The story goes something like this: You, as a person, find yourself within a cave, chained to the ground, facing a stone wall. You cannot stand, and all you know are the images that play out before you, which are the shadows cast by a light source from behind you. You cannot see behind you, but you know that there are others in the cave with you. This is the only state you have ever known. It is your only reality of the world. Plato goes on to explain that then one day, people come and remove your chains, and take you out of the cave. As you can imagine, you are scared and frightful, and thus fight these individuals as they drag you into this new setting. However, over time you learn to accept the larger image of the world around you and come to understand life outside of the cave. You then attempt to go back into the cave to free others.
This story was Plato’s attempt to explain the world around us. Just picture it: You are chained to the ground and all you can see in front of you is a cave wall. There is a light source behind you, which casts reflections on the wall.
What do you think you would think of these reflections? Could they represent family members? Or friends? What about a god?
