Companies are composed of people. Does the company care? No, it’s not a living thing.
Do the people who make up the company care. Lot’s of them do. A few probably don’t.
Are corporate attempts to address the whole Covid-19 pandemic examples of corporate caring and altruistic behavior? Probably not, since a company, once again, isn’t a living, emotional sentient thing.
Do the genuine concerns for other people by the people in these companies show through in their Covid-19 marketing? Probably, at least to some extent.
In my opinion, it’s not the role of companies to feign corporate concern. The primary role of a company is to make money, which creates products and services for consumers and provides jobs for employees. Maybe companies should be more socially conscious as part of their corporate cultures. A few might actually do just that.
I suppose I view corporations as a sort of machine that people operate. I don’t expect machines to care — they have no feelings and just do what they were built to do. The people, however, who run machines are largely the same as any other group of people.
So when a corporate entity expresses concern over social and health issues — like the Covid-19 pandemic — of course there’s a marketing component to it. But I also think that at least some of the sentiments expressed by those companies actually reflect the concerns of the people who run the companies.
Egotistical, narcissistic, psychopaths are disproportionately represented at the higher levels of most mid-sized to larger corporations. I expect no compassion from these people because they’re incapable of it — only manipulative, self-serving behavior. Not everyone at the top is like that, though.
I guess what I’m saying is that it’s a mixed bag. We shouldn’t expect corporations to behave like caring people. But I don’t think we ought cynically dismiss their actions out of hand when, on occasion, they seem to at least make an effort that might reflect some of the genuine concerns of the people who work there.
