A few days ago, with the ceremonious curtain call of the Army Day (1^st August) celebration attended by mother heroes and young heroes, The  Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Group（hereinafter referred to as YRPG）, as the main supporter of the activity, has become a focus of discussion among the medical enterprises. They may wonder, “How many medicines have YRPG sold to the army?” or “Why should they invest huge amount of money on some irrequitable things?” Through these reactions, we find that some domestic enterprises have a wrong notion in understanding their social responsibilities. In a sense, the development of an enterprise is similar to that of a human being. Since the enterprise is involved in a complicated social ecosystem, it will experience the “evolution process” in pursuing its own value when it develops into a certain scale. This “evolution process” shows the entrepreneur’s attitude of passive adaptation and its free will of seeking for its own development. It should be pointed out that the enterprise’s implementation of its social responsibility is neither fashion following nor image building.

Paradox Choice between Profit and Long-term Development，

Which one should be put in the first place, profit seeking or a long-term stable development? Without profit, the enterprise cannot sustain for long, without a long-term development strategy, how can the enterprise get a sustainable profit? This paradox has been dominating the minds of decision-makers of large and medium-sized enterprises in China. In solving this problem, the enterprise’s sense of social responsibilities must be taken into consideration first. We may have a better understanding about the relationship between the enterprise’s sense of social responsibility and its long-term development with the remarks given by Xu Jingren, board chairman of the Yangtze River Pharmaceutical, “In those years when we began our business, we always infused our staff with the desire of making profit, but along with the growth of our business into the largest domestic medical enterprise, looking back, we find that the company shares a parallel development with the whole society. It is the company’s planning and operations, which meet the requirements of the whole society, instead of seeking profit blindly, that help it grow into such a large scale enterprise as today.

Professor Yang Peiting, chief editor of the Chinese and Foreign Enterprise Management, believes that the large and medium-sized enterprises should not only focus on seeking for its profit maximization, on the contrary, it should lay stress on its long-term stable development. Therefore, when some medical enterprises view the ten years’ preferential treatment for families of servicemen and martyrs organized by YRPG as being driven by Xu Jingren’s complex of his military life, whereas we find in this movement the “evolution process” of the enterprises and entrepreneurs who are now on their way to maturity.  

Paradox Choice between Inner and Outer Responsibility

With a right notion of its social responsibility, the enterprise should start from within to shoulder this responsibility. In fact, the simplest way to investigate an enterprise’s social responsibility is to probe into its culture, since the enterprise itself is the epitome of the society.

Xu Jingren, the president of a large medical enterprise which has more than 6,000 staffs and 10,000 million Yuan of sales, believes that the enterprise sells not only products to the market, but also posts to the employees who buy them with their youth. These remarks are very ingenious. In an open society, two-way choice between the enterprises and the employees is an irreversible trend. To attract the excellent talents, the enterprise needs to “market” itself. The experience of YRPG is that the decision-makers should always think reversely and always ask themselves: whether our enterprise, posts, salary, and our future could win the favor of our staff? Experience proves that only when the enterprise willingly shoulders its responsibilities, taking the development of its staff career as the crucial matter in its own development, will the staffs be willing to dedicate their youth to the enterprise.