Why Do Reputable Corporations Do Bad Deeds?

The present society is the one where there are lots of things that could potentially do severe damage to the residents, among which; harmful products are the severest one that is frequently appeared in our daily life. In recent years, the recurrence of harmful agricultural products incidents in China exerts a severely negative influence on the inherently fragile agricultural brand assets, which greatly reduces the consumers’confidence on domestic brands of agricultural products, and makes great damage to the international image of our domestic agricultural brands. With the frequent appearance of harmful products, the issue has received more and more attention from researchers and experts. Why do corporations do such bad deeds which not only do harm to customers but also to their own reputations? Why do managers make decisions to produce harmful products? What kinds of factors can lead to the appearance and development of such decisions? What kinds of measures the corporations and society should take in order to eradicate the product harm crisis before it has even begun?The literature review and empirical research have been employed in order to study the reasons why corporations make decisions to produce harmful products. A series of hypothesis have been put forward and the research model has been established based on the literature review, theoretical analysis, case study interview, as well as the author’s own reflections. Questionnaires are collected so that SPSS17.0can be employed to do descriptive statistical analysis, reliability and validity analysis, regression analysis, and hierarchy regression analysis for the sake of confirming the hypothesis of the present study. The following five results have been found. Firstly, different corporations have disparate possibility of making decisions to produce harmful products. Secondly, the financial pressure and equipment of the corporations have a significant influence on harmful production decision. In other words, the greater financial pressure the corporation suffers, the greater the possibility is; the worse the equipment is, the greater the possibility is. Thirdly, the external factors, such as the relevant policies, and consumers’response to the harmful products, significantly influence the corporations’decisions. Put it in another way, the more strict the policies are, the less the possibility is; the stronger the consumers’ reactions are, the weaker the possibility is. Fourthly, the entrepreneurship plays a very important role in the process of harmful production decision. Confronting internal and external pressure, the corporations with grater entrepreneurship are less likely to make decisions to produce harmful products. Last but not least, public opinions are key mediators in the process of harmful production decision. Faced with internal and external pressure, if with more powerful public opinions, corporations are less likely to make decisions to produce harmful products.This study explains the reasons why corporations make harmful production decisions on the theoretical basis, which set stage for further research on product harm crisis from new perspectives. In addition, constructive suggestions have been provided to the enterprises or even the whole agricultural industry in terms of how to cope with product harm crisis.