In this day and age, megacorporations dominate America’s landscape. From Walmart to Pfizer, large businesses are everywhere, and millions of people around the world are involved in keeping them running. They create many jobs, but many are outsourced. They create a lot of revenue, but most of that revenue is only distributed among a few at the top of the corporate ladder. But, corporations are not all bad. For one thing, they offer products at more affordable prices to the consumer.
Small businesses are another thing. Small businesses, though still prevalent, are losing out in many ways to the proliferation of the large corporation. It is hard to offer competitive prices to the consumer without all the government and financial backing. The atmosphere in both environments can differ greatly, as well, both for the consumer and those working for either. I would like to take a moment to list all the pros and cons:
Corporations – Benefits to The Employee
real and perceived pros of working for Corporations:
1.) Paid Vacations, Sick time, Maternity Leave and other benefits
2.) Standardization/designation of job description
3.) Regular, calculated raises/ room for advancement
4.) Health Insurance (benefits)
These are just a few of the benefits reported to me.
The benefits of working at a Small Business include:
1.) Direct contribution to product
2.) Loyalty to workers
3.) Casual Atmosphere
4.) Working with Local Community
The differences between working for a small business and a large corporation are great. By contrast, let’s look at the Cons of Corporations.
Corporations -Cons To Employee
1.) Outsourcing
2.) An employee must follow a set system.
3.) Not always room for creative fulfillment
Small Business Cons
1.) sometimes disorganized
2.) less of a job description-do multiple jobs
3.) less advancement – benefits.
Of course, these are all possible pros and cons, and of course many businesses, both multimillion and small home businesses, don’t always follow such a set pattern. There are good large corporations, and unfair small businesses, to be sure. I personally find Whole Food’s Multimillion dollar corporation to be a great business, with just and equatable treatment of their employees and fair business practices.
What spawned this article was watching the documentary Walmart: The High Cost Of Low Price. This is fascinating film and I would recommend it to anyone. Indeed, Walmart and Sam’s Club in particular offer many advantages to the consumer. They have a killer selection and low, low prices. But at what cost? I thought I would share with you a few facts I learned from this movie about Walmart, America’s Big Corporation that’s been put in the spotlight in recent years.
Walmart is able to offer such competitive prices to the consumer through many tax abatements and federal subsidies. That is, the government gives them money and deals and breaks, which usually are not available to the small business owner. Large corporations create a monopoly, which steers funds away from the independent retailer.
At the time this documentary was made (2005), Walmart was employing workers in China and Bangladesh to make the clothing they sell. People were paid less than $3.00 a day for their labors, and then the item was drastically marked up for the consumer. Let me illustrate an example. The example was given that 18 cents might go into a shirt, what with the cost of fabric and the pennies a laborer was paid to make it. The average mark-up for that shirt would then be $14.96 retail.
The corporations basically feed upon themselves and grow bigger and bigger, since it is almost 100% profit. Of course, you have to add in American labor and all that, too. It’s just everything operates on a grander scale.
In small business, cash must be taken directly from the store’s inventory to pay employees. There are fewer foreign connections that can get a cheap product, so small business may pay more for the same item, though they have much less money to spend. They then, therefore, have less money to spend on products for their business, and cannot offer such low prices to consumers. Ultimately, they often go out of business.
I hope this article has shed some light on the pros and cons of corporations and small businesses. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I personally feel it would be a shame for the small independent retailers to disappear entirely. A don’t think business should be a monopoly, and that the environment and people should be exploited for maximum profit. On the other hand, corporations can offer many benefits to consumer and employee. But at what cost?
