What’s more, nowadays voices calling for human-oriented management are not lonely. The reason can be easily understand by the following two ideas. “The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”[5] While a household adage tells us that we should work to live, not live to work. Divergence in attitudes towards value and goal is conspicuous. And it is just this rift that leads to incompatible conflict, thanks to which a new subject called Human Resource Management (HRM) comes into being.
These three strong forces shape the mechanism of capitalism through conflicts and compromise. And it is a dynamic process in which the mechanism is always changing. Here, I want to introduce another two forces which should not be neglected in this process.
Media, as information collector-distributor, plays a vital role throughout the process in that it exerts subtle influence on the equilibrium. For instance, reports exaggerating the might of terror may spare US government extra powers in the name of war on terror which otherwise are in no position to be gained. Headlines on global warming may immediately cut down the revenue of some oil companies. The power of media is so overwhelming that if it has been manipulated, the consequence would be catastrophic. Because once media loses its objectivity, the balance between the three forces will be broken. At that time, one single force (the one supported by media) will wield so much power that the delicate system of conflict and compromise will go wrong. This does not necessarily mean the whole system will collapse. However, what we can be sure about is that the process will be postponed. In the meantime, economic inefficiency and unstable factors will arise.
University, as knowledge explorer and disseminator, is always thought to be the authority of universal truth. Their testimonials are believed to be an unassailable indicator for the future, which may radically change the policy of the whole nation, or even trigger a campaign world-wide. When it comes to the crunch, all three forces will have to turn to universities for advices. Therefore the role of university is indispensable. If it is subject to one single force, unbalance of power occurs, which will inevitably give rise to consequences as mentioned in the previous paragraph.
