Social Responsibility
Shui: In China we have this kind of a philosophy saying when a man is over 50, he knows his destiny. And usually at this time he will change a little bit to more philosophical or more destinal thinking or actions. And I also noted that you actually recently, especially during this trip in China, you mentioned several times on different occasions the idea of responsibility, social responsibility or company responsibility, things like that. Can you elaborate?
Gates: Well a company, when it brings together great people, it helps to have a purpose —a purpose that’s, yes, it includes profitable growth, but it’s beyond that. And for the Microsoft employees, it’s about the magic of software, how it empowers people. And so by doing projects like these community centers or teacher training, we energize our employees, we’re able to attract people who want to be part of what we are enabling. And, so it’s more than just numbers. We all benefit from that, we all think it’s important, and we have partners. In each country we sit down with the government and talk about what their priorities are and how we can fit into that. In China it’s actually quite structured, where the different ministries are — particularly MII and NDRC —are coming up with goals that they’d like us to achieve. Some are just economic development; some are how we get involved with education; and some of these more equity and social-type things. And that is fantastic. We engage in that with a lot of excitement.
|
大学英语---