Review the “Chapter Two Case: Michael Porter on TED – The Case for Letting Business Solve Social Problems” at the end of Ch. 2 of Business Driven Technology.
Answer the following questions:

Do you agree or disagree that business can solve social problems? Justify your answer.
How can the concepts discussed by Michael Porter help with the decision making process for managers at the three different managerial levels?

Respond to at least three of your peers. In your response, address any thoughts you have on if business can solve social problems and if it can help managers make decisions. 
Students need to contribute three substantive posts in this discussion by the due date indicated. The substantive posts can be any combination of responses and replies.

Peer 1 

If the statement was stated slightly different I would completely agree with it. I do believe that business can help with social problems, but they will not be the resolve for them. For example, many commercial grocery stores donate all the food that is past its “Selling” date to food banks and non-profits that feed the poor. Just because it has past its sell by date does not mean the food is bad, it just means you cannot legally sell the product. There are more and more non-profits to help the less fortunate in almost every community. The fact that businesses will not be the resolve for social problems is simply because they are a business they are here to make money, one of the reasons for even the handout of the food example is because they get to write that loss off on taxes.
Most businesses are broken into a few different management levels, Operations, VPs and executive staff. The operations management provide day to day decisions that affect the operations of say their bank branch which they manage. They make decisions such as who is working which teller line. VPs and support staff make decisions on who is doing what problems or incidents. The Executive staff focus on more of the business long term decisions which have an affect of the entire company.

Reference: Baltzan P (2017, Business Driven Technology (7th ed) New York, NY, McGraw-Hill

Peer 2

Do you agree or disagree that business can solve social problems? Justify your answer.
Yes, I do believe that businesses can help solve social problems. There have been an increasing number of restaurants, farmers markets, grocery stores and even some college campuses that donate fresh food that is past its’ selling prime, but still perfectly safe to eat, to food pantries who distribute it to low income families in both rural and urban food deserts. This not only helps feed many needy families but is also good for the planet. Wasted food is a huge producer of greenhouse gasses which contribute to climate change.
Publix supermarkets are active supporters of youth organizations in their communities and also donate to Habitat for Humanity. Stoneyfield farms are big contributors to environmental causes and nonprofits.          .
Bill and Melinda Gates created their foundation to help improve the health conditions for children in developing countries. They have also donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the library system to provide internet access and computers to libraries nationwide. Their foundation is also dedicated to improving our failing education system by donating millions of dollars to help schools hire and retain high-quality teachers, and educational materials. Warren Buffett is also a huge contributor to the foundation. While this is a non-profit, it does have a big social impact.
These are just a few examples of how businesses are working to help solve social problems. I also believe that when a business is involved in giving back to their communities and helping to solve social injustices or supporting environmental issues, this helps build customer goodwill which in turn can lead to increased profits. I know I would rather spend a little more with a company that does good things and gives back than one that only cares about their shareholders profits. Mr. Porter stated that we need to achieve scalability when it comes to businesses helping solve social problems. If businesses are to buy in to this, they need to see how much more profitable they could be by working on social problems and less profitable by not doing it.
·        How can the concepts discussed by Michael Porter help with the decision- making process for managers at the three different managerial levels?
Operational – These lower level managers make structured decisions that affect the day to day operations of their departments regarding internal functions, such as which machine an employee will run today or shifting people around to cover for someone who is out sick.
Managerial – These middle level managers make semi-structured decisions that affect a short-ish term time frame. Their performance indicators focus on efficiency and effectiveness.
Strategic – These high level, senior executives make unstructured decisions that affect a long term time frame. Their focus is on the effectiveness and success of the entire company.

Topic: Political Systems

Instructions:
Explain how conservatism and socialism are incorporated in the US political system. Use evidence (cite sources) to support your response from assigned readings or online lessons, and at least one outside scholarly source.
 Be sure to use examples.

Textbook:

 Magstadt, T. (2017). Understanding Politics: Ideas, institutions, and issues (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage. 

Required Resources:
Read/review the following resources for this activity:

Textbook: Chapter 3, 4; review Chapter 2 (Section: Ideologies and Politics in the United States)
Lesson
Additional scholarly sources you identify through your own research

 Lesson: Political Science Theories:
 
Theories
After the fall of Rome, within Western civilizations, the Church ultimately became interwoven with the centralized power of the appointed kings and queens. But over time, philosophers, and then the people, wondered if this was the best way to organize a government. They began by questioning the Church’s role in government, and ultimately expanded into an examination of the need for monarchies in general.
These thoughts began with the work of Niccolo Machiavelli in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries. In The Prince, Machiavelli discusses the role of power in maintaining rule. Although not a direct link to democratic thought because he is advising a prince on how to keep his control over the people, his work was one of the first to hint at a need for a separation of church and state, which is a concept that still elicits controversy today.

Roughly a century later, Thomas Hobbes also questioned the role of the Church within the government. In writing Leviathan, Hobbes advocated the need for a large governmental structure (thus a leviathan) to rule over the people and he began to question the role of the Church in this process. Although a supporter of authoritarian governments, Hobbes was not a supporter of the Church’s power within government. Outside of this premise, he is also known for coining the phrase “state of nature.” This idea stems from his examination of what people look like without any government. He saw this state as very bleak, representing utter chaos and strife, because he theorized that without a strong ruling government to keep the peace, people would be at war with one another as they attempted to seize power from one another as a means of getting what they desired and as a way to avoid what they did not. However, in contrast to what he was proposing, by looking at humanity at its core, he introduced the idea of humanity as thinking for itself, which is the foundation of any democracy.
It was this concept that John Locke then built upon a few decades later by suggesting that the people move away from an all-oppressive ruler to a government based upon the rule of the citizens with a system of checks and balances,. Locke’s ideas serve as the basis of much of the U.S. founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
Liberalism Defined

The Meaning of the Word Liberal
The term liberal in modern vocabularies has taken on an entirely different meaning from its original context. Liberal, when applied to political philosophy, represents a belief that the government should interfere very little in the daily lives of its citizens. This notion allows the individual to pursue his or her own interests without fear of extreme government regulation.
Since The Great Depression, which hit the world the hardest during the 1930s, the U.S. government has trended towards a larger government, as have other Western European nations. This happened as a result of the government providing many social services to protect its citizens from the likes of economic disaster and the toils of war. How far you think the government should go in aiding its citizens depends upon which political ideology most appeals to you. The classic liberal, a categorization credited to John Locke and also known as the modern conservative, tends to favor small government, whereas the modern liberal, modeled on the work of T. H.Green, prefers more governmental programs.
How far you think the government should go in aiding its citizens depends upon which political ideology most appeals to you. The classic liberal, a categorization credited to John Locke and also known as the modern conservative, tends to favor small government, whereas the modern liberal, modeled on the work of T. H.Green, prefers more governmental programs.
Capitalism and Socialism Compared

Capitalism represents the idea of the people controlling the means of production, with little to no interference by government. Capitalism is based on the idea of a market driven economy. This concept simply means that the market (or the masses) drive what is produced by industry with their demand for products. For example, if a great deal of people desire a certain item, then those who produce it will stay in business as long as the demand continues. However, if demand lags, or dies out altogether, that same industry will have to evolve to produce another in-demand product,or leave the market. This demand for product thus drives what is produced, and then determines which industries flourish. This system, in its truest sense, leaves government out of the economic process. Adam Smith, in writing The Wealth of Nations, was an advocate for this type of economic system. However, over time, it has been discovered that some regulation of business is needed, for instance, to preventi a monopoly in order to keep the market competitive.
In contrast to this model of low government involvement, socialism calls for the complete control of production by government. This is a concept originated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two political philosophers during the 19th century, in their Communist Manifesto. Neither man was a fan of the world in which he was raised, where the industrial revolution was taking off and people were suffering under the harsh working conditions found in pure capitalism. They believed that if they presented a new economic plan that replaced the newly established capitalist principles, they could create a happier world for the individual. This world included the human rights of the liberal but went even further to ensure an equal distribution of wealth and goods to the masses. Their theory argued for a socialist transition, where the government seizes all the means of production from the masses, as a way of creating the pathway to communism (or a perfect utopia).
As with any plan, variations in practice can occur. This is exactly what happened when Russia, the first country to implement the teachings of Marx, achieved its revolution. Thus, came the rise of Marxism-Leninism, which varied dramatically from Marx’s proposed plan. The practice of this ideology resulted in many years of conflict with the West during the Cold War. The principal powers during that time, the United States and the Soviet Union, featured two completely different philosophies regarding government and politics. In the end, the Soviet Union’s political, governmental, and economic approaches proved to be disastrous for its society, and the individuals within it. It featured a political process that decided who got what, when, and how in the most arbitrary manner, and used the government to execute those decisions brutally and ruthlessly. In the end, Soviet citizens, tired of being told they were part of one of the world’s great superpowers while waiting in line for basic necessities, gradually withdrew their interest in and support of their government, and the system eventually collapsed.
Summary
Studying politics has been an important part of the work of ancient and modern philosophers. As in most sciences, theories have evolved as new information has become available and new ways of exploring become possible. Liberalism split into conservatism and modern liberalism to form two different ideologies that same with capitalism and socialism.