In a doctoral seminar on corporate social responsibility
(CSR), the professor turned to me, perhaps because by then I was also taking
courses in the religious studies department, and asked, “What is enlightened
self-interest?” In my answer, I argued that such self-interest is distinctly
oriented to the long-term, rather than, for example, immediate profits.
Alternatively, I could have stressed the ethical connotation of the word,
enlightened, but the self-interest component would seem to invalidate an
ethical basis. In line with the notion of love as caritas, which is human love (eros) sublimated up directed to God,
as distinct from agape, which excludes
lower, self-interest inclusive, love, doing good can go along with long-term
self-interest. In other words, doing good has value because good is done even
if self-interest is salient in the motive. In regard to CSR, the self-interest
that coincides is long-term-oriented. Amazon, for instance, giving the poor
(i.e., Medicaid recipients) 50 percent off on the monthly charge for Amazon
Prime is in line with gaining full-paying customers eventually, for it usually takes a while for poor people to move up
the economic ladder.
In 2017, Amazon made discounts of an almost 50 percent
discount on Prime memberships available to people receiving “food stamps.” The
following year, the company expanded its
reach to customers by giving the discount to people with Medicaid medical
insurance. The first step to increasing a standard customer base is to reach
out to people who would not become customers without an additional incentive. Amazon’s
management wanted “to gain more market share among low-income consumers and
those without access to traditional banking and credit.”[1]
The company was betting that a significant enough percentage of the
discount-taking customers would eventually have enough wealth to access banking
that they could pay the full monthly price. I suspect that a manager “ran the
numbers” based on an estimate of that percentage and set the discount
accordingly as a break-even point.
That Amazon’s management was likely geared to the company’s
long-term financial interest in terms of market-share generally and turning
impoverished people into full-paying customers more specifically does not mean
that societal good was not enhanced, for the purchase power of the poorest of
the poor could be expanded. The good, in other words, lay in the added utility,
and this is a significant ethical good, for the poorest, I can attest, suffer
unrelentingly with the hardships of poverty. Not even hard work can result in
appreciable change in terms of income and wealth. The poor benefitting from
Amazon’s discount justifiably don’t care whether the company’s management
extended the offer in order to gain market-share.
A company’s enlightened self-interest in CSR does not mean
that good is not done. Its “certainly the case that we’re hoping to create some
lifetime Prime members here,” a program manager at Amazon said when the
expansion to Medicaid occurred in 2018.[2]
The company was positioning itself to go head to head with Walmart. Amazon was
clear that it was “making this move for business reasons, not for altruism, but”—and
here is my point—“that doesn’t mean it won’t help people,” said Avi Greengart,
an industry analyst at a marketing research firm.[3]
Altruism may actually be quite rare, or even non-existent in its pure form, in
human nature even as it appreciates the good.
Caritas is much more realistic than agape. It is for this reason that the latter is designated as divine love—the self-emptying (hence selfless) love that a deity not having a human nature has. In Christianity, Augustine and Calvin emphasize in their respective writings that God is love. These theologians differed, however, on whether it is too much to ask humans to have and display selfless (agape) love rather than merely self-interest-infused love aimed high to God (caritas); Calvin was more idealistic in this respect.
Doing good in the sense of improving the lot of other people applies to not only the Christian notion of neighbor-love, that is, caritas seu benevolentia universalis, but also simply wanting to make a positive impact society. Self-interest is more salient in the latter--that is, doing good ethically in the absence of love, but this does not mean that good is not done, even if as a byproduct. This brings us back to corporate social responsibility, realistically construed.
Caritas is much more realistic than agape. It is for this reason that the latter is designated as divine love—the self-emptying (hence selfless) love that a deity not having a human nature has. In Christianity, Augustine and Calvin emphasize in their respective writings that God is love. These theologians differed, however, on whether it is too much to ask humans to have and display selfless (agape) love rather than merely self-interest-infused love aimed high to God (caritas); Calvin was more idealistic in this respect.
Doing good in the sense of improving the lot of other people applies to not only the Christian notion of neighbor-love, that is, caritas seu benevolentia universalis, but also simply wanting to make a positive impact society. Self-interest is more salient in the latter--that is, doing good ethically in the absence of love, but this does not mean that good is not done, even if as a byproduct. This brings us back to corporate social responsibility, realistically construed.
1, Elizabeth Weise, “Medicaid Recipients Can Get Discount on Amazon Prime,” USA Today, March 8, 2018.
2, Ibid.
3, Ibid.
