MGMT 4106: BUSINESS IN ITS SOCIAL SETTING (CÁRDENAS)
Final Exam - Fall 2018
Our Final Exam consists of one essay written as a thoughtful response to one of the six
prompts provided below. Your essay should draw from the materials provided on our
class Canvass page (i.e., power points, videos, linked content), our lectures and any
other citable source. Your essay should be no less than four (4) double-spaced pages.
Please use the Modern Language Association (MLA) format. The essay is due to me via
Turnitin by 10:00 p.m. Tuesday, December 11, 2018.
Read and reflect carefully on the statements put forward in your chosen prompt. Each
makes profound assertions about the current and evolving state of society and the role
of business, capitalism, and Western economic, religious and philosophical thought.
Your essay with respect to your chosen prompt is your response to these questions:
First: Identify and discuss the thesis of your selected prompt and make a reasoned
argument for your agreement or disagreement with the thesis of your prompt.
Second: With respect to the issues raised by your prompt, how do you think you
will use this information in your life?
Your essay will be assessed based on your demonstrated understanding of the selected
content and your demonstrated analysis of its implications for your future.
Essay Prompt #1 (From the Washington Post article Is the American Dream Killing
Us?)
“The proper question may be: Is the American Dream killing us? American culture
emphasizes striving for and achieving economic success. In practice, realizing the
American Dream is the standard of success, vague though it is. It surely includes
homeownership, modest financial and job security, and a bright outlook for our children.
When striving accomplishes these goals, it strengthens a sense of accomplishment and
self-worth.
But when the striving falters and fails — when the American Dream becomes
unattainable — it’s a judgment on our lives. By our late 40s or 50s, the reckoning is on
us. It’s harder to do then what we might have done earlier. We become hostage to
unrealized hopes. More Americans are now in this precarious position. Our obsession
with the American Dream measures our ambition — and anger.”
Essay Prompt #2 (From the Washington Post article Coming Technology Will
Likely Destroy Millions of Jobs)
“American manufacturing job losses to China and Mexico were a major theme of the
presidential campaign, and President Trump has followed up on his promise to pressure
manufacturers to keep jobs here rather than send them abroad. Already, he has
jawboned automakers Ford, General Motors, Toyota and Fiat Chrysler and heating and
cooling manufacturer Carrier into keeping and creating jobs in the United States.
What he hasn't yet addressed — but should — is the looming technology tsunami that
will hit the U.S. job market over the next five to 15 years and likely destroy tens of
millions of jobs due to automation by artificial intelligence, 3D manufacturing, advanced
robotics and driverless vehicles — among other emerging technologies. The best
research to date indicates that 47 percent of all U.S. jobs are likely to be replaced by
technology over the next 10 to 15 years, more than 80 million in all, according to the
Bank of England.
Think back to the human misery in this country during the financial recession when
unemployment hit 10 percent. Triple that. Or even quintuple it. We as a society and as
individuals are not ready for anything like that. This upheaval has the potential of being
as disruptive for us now as the Industrial Revolution was for our ancestors.
Techno-optimists tell us to relax — don’t worry, technology will produce lots of new jobs
just like it did during the Industrial Revolution. History will repeat itself, they say. Well,
not so fast. First, human disruption caused by the Industrial Revolution in Britain lasted
60 to 90 years, depending on the historical research. That is a long time for society to
“right” itself, and lot of personal pain. Second, this time will be different because there
will be new questions: Will technology produce lots of new jobs that advancing
technology itself can’t do? And will displaced workers be able to keep up with the pace
of advancing technologies?
These issues should be front and center on the president’s agenda. Planning for how
our country will adapt to the coming technology tsunami must start now. We are talking
about a major societal challenge — preservation of the American Dream — as well as
the future of work in the United States and the world.”
Essay Prompt #3 (From Pope Francis’ Encyclical Laudato Si, On Care for Our
Common Home, paragraph 67 (also in The Anthropocene and Climate Change
powerpoint)
“We are not God. The earth was here before us and it has been given to us. This allows
us to respond to the charge that Judaeo-Christian thinking, on the basis of the Genesis
account which grants man “dominion” over the earth (cf. Gen 1:28), has encouraged the
unbridled exploitation of nature by painting him as domineering and destructive by
nature. This is not a correct interpretation of the Bible as understood by the Church.
Although it is true that we Christians have at times incorrectly interpreted the Scriptures,
nowadays we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and
given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures.
The biblical texts are to be read in their context, with an appropriate hermeneutic,
recognizing that they tell us to “till and keep” the garden of the world (cf. Gen 2:15).
“Tilling” refers to cultivating, ploughing or working, while “keeping” means caring,
protecting, overseeing and preserving. This implies a relationship of mutual responsibility
between human beings and nature. Each community can take from the bounty of the
earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect the earth and
to ensure its fruitfulness for coming generations. “The earth is the Lord’s” (Ps 24:1); to
him belongs “the earth with all that is within it” (Dt 10:14). Thus God rejects every claim
to absolute ownership: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for
you are strangers and sojourners with me” (Lev 25:23).”
Essay Prompt #4 (From The Anthropocene and Climate Change powerpoint).
“Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over
the fish and the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth
upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)
“This modern, instrumental view of matter as primarily for human use arises in part from
a dualistic Western philosophical view of mind and matter. Adapted into Jewish,
Christian, and Islamic religious perspectives, this dualism associates mind with the soul
as a transcendent spiritual entity given sovereignty and dominion over matter. Mind is
often valued primarily for its rationality in contrast to a lifeless world. At the same time
we ensure our radical discontinuity from it. Interestingly, views of the uniqueness of the
human bring many traditional religious perspectives into sync with modern instrumental
rationalism. In Western religious traditions, for example, the human is seen as an
exclusively gifted creature with a transcendent soul that manifests the divine image and
likeness. Consequently, this soul should be liberated from the material world. In many
contemporary reductionist perspectives (philosophical and scientific) the human with
rational mind and technical prowess stands as the pinnacle of evolution. Ironically,
religions emphasizing the uniqueness of the human as the image of God meet marketdriven applied science and technology precisely at this point of the special nature of the
human to justify exploitation of the natural world. Anthropocentrism in various forms,
religious, philosophical, scientific, and economic, has led, perhaps inadvertently, to the
dominance of humans in this modern period, now called the Anthropocene.”
(Introduction to the Routledge Handbook on Religion and Ecology (October 2016) by
Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim).
Essay Prompt #5 (From Ted Hanauer’s TED Talk “Beware Fellow Plutocrats, the
Pitchforks are Coming”)
“Capitalism is the greatest social technology ever invented for creating prosperity in
human societies, if it is well managed, but capitalism, because of the fundamental
multiplicative dynamics of complex systems, tends towards, inexorably, inequality,
concentration and collapse. The work of democracies is to maximize the inclusion of the
many in order to create prosperity, not to enable the few to accumulate money.
Government does create prosperity and growth, by creating the conditions that allow
both entrepreneurs and their customers to thrive. Balancing the power of capitalists like
me and workers isn't bad for capitalism. It's essential to it. Programs like a reasonable
minimum wage, affordable healthcare, paid sick leave, and the progressive taxation
necessary to pay for the important infrastructure necessary for the middle class like
education, R and D, these are indispensable tools shrewd capitalists should embrace to
drive growth, because no one benefits from it like us.”
….
“Many economists would have you believe that their field is an objective science. I
disagree, and I think that it is equally a tool that humans use to enforce and encode our
social and moral preferences and prejudices about status and power, which is why
plutocrats like me have always needed to find persuasive stories to tell everyone else
about why our relative positions are morally righteous and good for everyone: like, we
are indispensable, the job creators, and you are not; like, tax cuts for us create growth,
but investments in you will balloon our debt and bankrupt our great country; that we
matter; that you don't. For thousands of years, these stories were called divine right.
Today, we have trickle-down economics. How obviously, transparently self-serving all of
this is. We plutocrats need to see that the United States of America made us, not the
other way around; that a thriving middle class is the source of prosperity in capitalist
economies, not a consequence of it. And we should never forget that even the best of us
in the worst of circumstances are barefoot by the side of a dirt road selling fruit.”
Essay Prompt #6 (based on “The True Cost” documentary
The garment industry is the second-most polluting in the world. A significant amount of
this pollution is from “fast fashion” “disposable” clothing; a business model that relies on
people, including children, making clothes under conditions that we would consider
intolerable. As we have seen this semester, our buying and consumption is largely driven
by psychological impulses of which we may not be fully conscious. Indeed, as experts
posit in the film, consuming more can have a negative effect on our psyche.
Why do we tolerate such a system?
Describer whether a “Fair Trade” model could represent a more sustainable and ethical
alternative to the existing garment-consumption model.
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