Be a Spark And Alter The World
Do you like living in a messy place with the stink given off by a nearby industry? Or are you willing to root in an area with fresh air like Bali? Do you like to live in around an artificial lake full of polluted water or prefer a peaceful and natural environment? We all like choose the latter one. However, because some business do not undertake their social responsibility, these beautiful sights are gradually dying out. Richard Straub also notices the consequences arising from lacking social responsibility, so he wrote an article” Socially Responsible Business Can Only Succeed If It Becomes a Movement” and published it in the Harvard Business Review. He claims that merchants need to unite to launch a movement otherwise socially responsible business will not succeed. In this process, he effectively uses imagery, ethos and pathos to convince people to partake in the movement, but there are still some little things that can be improved and I will show them later.
Who is Richard Straub? Richard Straub founded the nonprofit Peter Drucker Society Europe after a 32-year career at IBM. IBM is an American multinational technology company and IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the world's largest employers. He is on the executive committee of the European Foundation for Management Development, which is Secretary General of the European Learning Industry Group, and serves the IBM Global Education practice in a strategic advisory role. As the saying goes, “many hands make light work”, he finds that solely relying on certain good business to undertake social responsibility is not ideal, because most companies are not willing to obey these irrelevant to profit things, such as environment, unemployment rate and customers’ right etc. Social responsibility is like a moral constraint to companies. In that case, the author proposed that there ought to be a movement to expand the impact. What I will do is to analyze the rhetoric methods used in this article to make it more convincing.
It is common to see imagery in this article. In the second paragraph, Straub writes “this one has stated with many people starting small fires”. He compares starting a movement to make a fire. Every single person’s effort is like a spark, but when gathering a certain amount of sparks, you will set off a big fire. Inspiring those who are not content with their situation and call for their join to make greater strides. Another imagery lies in the third paragraph where it is said that “sparks of activity are generating heat and light” and “small flames be fanned into a blazing fire”. It seems like a paradox of his main idea. Yet, he uses this imagery to describe a scene that small sparks are hard to become a blazing fire. He directly meanwhile euphemistically points out the question beneath readers’ hearts. We are afraid of gaining nothing after endeavor paid. Therefore, the author successfully grabs readers’ attention and emotions again by using imagery to utter their doubt and then he can easily continue his persuasion. Moreover, “ flame” or “spark” will make readers more excited and give them a feeling as if they join in a holy career.
Despite of imagery, Straub also uses ethos to make his paper even more persuasive. Above of all, he himself has some fame in the management realm, so people will tend to trust him. However, just referring to himself is possibly too subjective to audiences. Hence, he quotes or cites many entrepreneurs or outstanding companies in his article. For example, he uses Unilever, Michelin, Haier, HCL Technologies to emphasize more and more companies have already picked up their responsibility to society. There are some brands that people are so familiar with, so they may now hold same opinions with the author. Or when the founder of a small entity sees these examples, he may think that “oh, maybe I need to play my role in solving social problems otherwise my business will not as successful as those behemoth in the world.” Then he takes Larry Fink who is the CEO of BlackRock for example. Larry Fink announces that public expectations of your company have never been greater. With these evidences, people can seldom find excuses to refute the author. Using many authorities makes readers undoubted about the author’s idea.
Finally, in the end of the paper, Straub uses what Charles Handy said to end up, who is the great management theorist and storyteller. This method we call it pathos. “Let us just spark small fires in the darkness until they spread and the world is alight.” Though this sentence is concise, it is enough polished to arouse readers’ repressed emotions. At first glance, audiences may feel curious about this topic but then they may doubt the author’s claim. Whereas, when they subsequently see many familiar pieces of evidences in the article, they find that they are persuaded by Straub. Impressed by the last sentence, maybe there are entrepreneurs participating in the movement.
Until now, we have already analyzed this article’s rhetorical methods. Howbeit, I want to point out some small drawbacks. It could have been a perfect speech if the words can be more powerful and graceful. Also, more rhetorical methods are needed. For example, the author can compare some companies which do not carry out their roles with other positive cases. Also, if the author uses some grammar parallelism, it will be an imposing manner.
In conclusion, in this one of the most popular articles on the Harvard Business Review, the author convinces people especially merchants to take their roles in undertaking social responsibility and he adopts imagery, ethos and pathos to achieve his goal. However, it would be better if this work does some modification. I seemly see the scenario that each person try their best to involve in this activity to make the concept of picking up responsibility deeply root in our heart. Let us be a spark and eventually alter the world.
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Works cited
“Socially Responsible Business Can Only Succeed If It Becomes a Movement” Harvard Business Review,16 March 2018, https://hbr.org/2018/03/socially-responsible-business-can-only-succeed-if-it-becomes-a-movement. Accessed 20 March 2018.
