Henry Pomerance
4/21/20
Senior Project 2020
Business and Marketing
Critical Reflection #2: Describe a Moment and Analyze
For the past two weeks, I have researched how private sector businesses implement effective ESG practices (my essential question). Recently, I devised a hypothetical scenario which I thought fleshed out my understanding of how an ESG-minded company could profit from its progressiveness, and also how the snowball effect would create positive change (it is below). However, upon further review and after talking to Jacqueline I realized that this scenario does not relate to my essential question. This moment of uncertainty led me to realize that my question had to be tweaked, because all of my research was not lining up with it. So, I changed my question to “How do ESG practices help private sector businesses positively affect the public good?” This way, the question focuses more on the practices themselves and not the logistics-heavy implementation of them. Also, the new question is much more related to ESG as a choice, and not necessarily driven by public opinion (like in my scenario).
HYPOTHETICAL scenario using example Company A
Background:
-There is social outcry about worker’s rights, including benefits
-Company A has thousands of minimum wage workers, and is already notorious for treating its employees poorly
-Consumers say they will boycott Company A’s services and products
-Company A now faces a dual conundrum—they will lose profits in the short term, and investors will be more wary of Company A’s long term viability as a result of the consumer backlash and overall changing sentiment toward worker’s rights
Company A:
-Company A decides to increase benefits for all workers
-Consumers back off their boycott threats, and the public lauds Company A for being socially responsible; as a result, Company A’s loses money in the short term, makes money in the medium term and more importantly investor confidence in Company A strengthens, providing the company a stable outlook for the long term
Outside world:
-Thousands of Company A employees now have better working conditions and financial stability
-Other companies would feel compelled to also provide better benefits to their employees because of internal and external pressure to do so
-The combined effect of many companies providing better worker benefits is an overall better working environment becoming normalized