odsimonds Author

I am of the opinion that if you break it, you buy it. The company that is responsible, premeditated or accidental, for contamination of water supply or wildlife should, and usually does, pay for damages. This reasoning is also shown in environmental law. According to the EPA, “By law, the parties responsible for the use, transportation, storage, and disposal of hazardous substances and oil are liable for costs.” In the event that a company cannot pay for damages, or the responsible party cannot be found, the EPA has two federal funds to help pay for the damages. The two funds are the Superfund (CERCLA) that President Carter signed into law, and the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which gets most of its funding from the excise tax placed on oil companies per-barrel.

Companies who benefit from the protection and restoration of lands should pay a tax to these funds, if they do not already. These companies should not be held responsible with fronting the costs of restoration to lands when the damages were done by another company, but in the event that they could profit from lands being cleaned up by either of the two EPA funds, the company should give something back to that fund. Companies should be held responsible for the damages they cause, and be held responsible for maintaining the funds used to respond to such events.

“Laws and Executive Orders.”  EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, 08 Sept. 2016. Web. 04 July 2017. <https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/laws-and-executive-orders>.

“The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (OSLTF).”  The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (OSLTF). National Pollution Funds Center, 21 Dec. 2016. Web. 04 July 2017. <https://www.uscg.mil/npfc/about_npfc/osltf.asp>.

“What is the problem of “vanishing individual responsibility?’   How can a culture of individual responsibility be created or maintained in a corporate setting? What is your view of corporate responsibility? Check out Case 5.1 “Yahoo in China’ for additional thoughts.”

In a corporate setting, individual responsibility is a very difficult and inefficient idea when you look at a result of a finished team product. If an entry-level employee makes an error in their work, then the company is able, as a whole, to remove and replace that individual, without a very large loss. But, if the error was in an accumulated framework, including multiple individuals and their own works, then the problem shows itself. In a group contributed product, it is difficult to assign blame onto a single individual. For example, if a consumer buys a landline, and the landline is faulty, who do you assign the blame for it’s brokenness to? The electrician who installed it? Perhaps one of the assembly line workers? Or is it the foreman’s fault for not observing the faulty product and the error that made it faulty in the first place? It is easier for the entirety of the company to take the blame, and send a replacement product. The probability of the this problem arising increases when a hollow corporation uses foreign manufacturing methods and products. If a company is supplied different products from different sources, it enlarges the area of error, and the pool of individuals that would be at fault.

The only possibility, that comes to mind, of a company running efficiently off of individual responsibility successfully, would be a company that manufactures its own products, and that minimizes worker interaction within the corporation, in regards to the creation of products. This way, if there is a product-wide fault, then the company would be able to locate which part of the framework housed the fault, and who designed it that way. It is simply easier and better looking for a company to take the brunt of the blame as a whole and issue a product recall, then to find and pin the blame solely on a single individual. Examples of this happening can be seen throughout history by Car companies, such as the 9 million car recall by Toyota in 2009 and 2010.