We all live within a society. It can be huge, like international or domestic, or it can be quite insignificant: a family or a small circle of friends.
What is a social effect?
Modern business sees its ultimate goal in increasing profits and, as a result, capital growth. Both manufacturers, intermediaries, and retailers follow a simple rule: buy at the lowest price, sell at the highest, put the difference in your pocket. This is a kind of economic effect from the transition to a market economy and a capitalist way of managing and distributing resources.
The impact of the market economy on society
The effects of a market economy differ in the short and long run. Firms compete with each other, fighting for the buyer, improving the product and advertising policy, producing a positive social effect, attracting additional labor. Their efforts are speeding up the development of infrastructure in the region, and the machinations of unscrupulous competitors are made public.
Large enterprises strive for constant expansion of sales markets. To do this, they begin to produce much more goods than the consumer really needs. Price forgoods are declining, and in order to compensate for losses, the manufacturer begins to experiment with technology, cut costs, and look for more affordable raw materials and components. Demand is rising and consumer confidence is declining. There is already a negative social effect here. But the issue does not end with consumers and producers.
Through contact audiences, joint projects and investment, business has a tremendous impact on the social sphere. Youth culture, outlook, life values are changing. The policy adjusts to existing trends. All major research and development is financed by the private sector and is forced to proceed strictly in a given direction. The social effect is determined by the scale of entrepreneurial intervention in public life.
Social impact of economic activity over time
Often this intervention is targeted, single, but over the years it tends to accumulate and strengthen its position. The development of computer technology in less than ten years has radically changed the existing reality. Doors have been opened to innovative areas of medicine, robotics, aircraft engineering, rocket science, automotive engineering and, of course, the IT industry. At the same time, the total degradation of youth began, military conflicts and cyberattacks became more frequent, and the number of terrorist threats increased. Not everything has a direct connection with the advent of computers, but electronic technology has definitely brought a powerful social effect, consequenceswhich will be visible for decades to come. In addition, the development of technology always leads to a change in the social sphere, regardless of the nature of such changes.
Social effect is
First of all, it is necessary to understand the very concept of this phenomenon. Economic dictionaries and textbooks give different interpretations of this definition, but agree that the social effect is the result of the company's activities in the areas of the national economy, which is reflected in the development trends of society and cannot be accurately calculated. An enterprise, through its actions or inaction, changes the social environment, and these changes are easy to identify, both positive and negative.
Positive moments of social effect
Other researchers believe that the social effect is a kind of external effect - a visible reaction of society to changes in the internal environment of the enterprise. It can manifest itself in a positive way:
- departure from manual physical labor;
- reducing work time;
- growth of the creative component in the creation of goods and services and their promotion;
- improving the material standard of living of the able-bodied part of the population;
- heightened interest in environmental protection;
- he althy lifestyle and respect for the body and its needs;
- variety of entertainment and cultural exploration opportunities.
Negative points of social effect
As opposed to standingmention the visible negative sides:
- rising unemployment;
- mixing and assimilation of cultures;
- Income differentiation and population polarization: the difference between the lifestyles of the rich and the poor is becoming more visible;
- the need to adhere to traditions and social norms of behavior has disappeared;
- growing role of loans - popularization of life "in debt";
- substitution of values and concepts;
- growing popularity of business ideology: to live is to consume.
How to identify fundamental changes in society?
The market economy is slowly but surely crushing the social sphere, forcing people to think in their own terms and categories. In statistical reports, you can see the growth of gross domestic product, national income, per capita income, but the real social effect is what is usually left behind the scenes in the annual report. Later, historians will undertake to analyze this passage of time, mark the starting point, the climax and the development of consequences. And here and now you need to be content with dry numbers.
World famous companies and major domestic market players care about their prestige and strive to elevate themselves in the eyes of the public. Being engaged in socially useful activities, solving significant environmental and social problems, they keep parallel statistics on the growth or deterioration of the situation in the public environment.
Estimated indicators of social effect
- Decrease or increase in unemployment among the population. There is a numerically expressed social effect of the project, a simple example: the city-forming factory was closed, hundreds of people were left without work and livelihoods, the indicator decreased. A new plant was built on the site of the old plant - the figure is growing again.
- Improving the quality of ecosystems. In this case, the economic effect refers to the social effect. Economically, this indicator is expressed in an increase in the company's expenses for environmental activities, the purchase of innovative equipment for a closed production cycle and the payment of environmental fines.
- Availability of goods and entertainment to the population. Here we are talking about an increase in the number of cafes, restaurants, cinemas, beauty salons, nightclubs, highly specialized shops, entertainment complexes, etc. An alternative to the absolute amount of “establishments” is an increase in the part of the income that the population spends on entertainment and on household services. Usually these indicators are calculated together.
- The growth of the poor population in the total number at constant income. Easily calculated in absolute and percentage terms. And it serves as an indicator of a negative social effect. When, on the one hand, unemployment grows in a country, and, on the other hand, the capital of the richest strata of society increases, an economic imbalance occurs. Money is depreciating, jobs are being cut. With the accumulated money, the worker can no longer acquire what he wants, and his social status is falling. The poverty line is being pushed back, social tension is growing, social development is getting a new round.
You can also calculate indicators such as GDP, GNI, trade balance and other macroeconomic indicators, but they are practically useless in determining the social effect, as they involve measuring economic, not social good.
Global Manifestation
A change in the economic policy of a large enterprise affects not only the demand for its goods, but also suppliers from other industries, fluctuations in the labor market, public sentiment, fashion, the political course of the region.
The social effect of a national-scale project, such as the construction of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, determined the prospects for the development of the entire region and made significant changes to the country's political course. The construction and the first tests of the cosmodrome gave new jobs, an impetus to the development of space technology rocket science, but it was not without social upheavals and high-profile trials.
