Global Ethical Issues, Essay Example

Moral Impressions

In the case of Nestle’s infant formula controversy, amoral management model was used, but it was unintentional. The company was clearly casual or careless about the ethical factors of product development and marketing. The company indirectly discouraged breast-feeding in Third World countries, which resulted in an increased infant mortality rate. The company should have clearly communicated that they think that breast feeding is the best solution for all babies.

1. The chemical company Union Carbide leaked gases in India, which were harmful and caused the death of more than 2000 people. In this case, the behavior of the company was amoral, however, it was also intentional; the leadership simply did not consider the ethical factors of their operations. While they complied with the host country’s regulations, they did not consider the impact of their activities close to residential areas.
2. While Google’s operations in China, agreeing to cooperate with the government was a profit maximization strategy, serving the goal of the company to expand its operations worldwide, the company intentionally ignored their responsibility for customers: browsers. Following an amoral management model, they intentionally ignored ethical factors of collaborating with the government to spy on users.

Ethical Standards – Home or Host Country

A company needs to make a decision on which ethical standards it follows based on the impact each decision would have on the stakeholders. The MNC needs to achieve corporate legitimacy, while considering differing philosophies of the host and home countries. Many companies are tempted to go with lower standards of ethics to save money, however, at the same time they would potentially endanger lives.

Bribe and Grease Payment

A bribe is a large sum of money given to an official to influence their decision in a case. One example can be bribing an FDA official to approve a product even though there are some questionable side effects in the report (Steiner & Steiner, 2011, p. 322). A grease payment, however, is a smaller amount of incentive provided for the official, not to change the outcome of the case, but to speed it up or make the official do the job better. One example can be a company seeking planning permissions, when all approvals and plans are in order and in place, but the corporation can start earning money sooner if the approval process is faster.

Transparency International Rankings

Today, India has a corruption perception index score of 36 out of 100, which gives it a ranking of 94. Russia, on the other hand, ranks 127^th, and China 80^th (Transparency International, 2013). The corruption perceptions index shows how corrupt government officials are. Therefore, in order to tackle the problem, countries with a high ranking should introduce new transparency legislation in the public sector and allow international organizations to carry out research and provide support in creating policies. Antibribery provisions should also be introduced by individual governments. The OECD and the UN Convention against Corruption provide guidelines for developing antibribery initiatives.

Improving Global Business Ethics. Strategies

 Leaders of international and global companies need to take ownership of the implementation of ethical principles. They need to familiarize themselves with policies, procedures, provide training and support for employees and develop a strategy that makes detection, reporting and investigation simple. Further, the business should comply with the UN Global Impact Principles regarding human rights, labor standards, environment and anticorruption initiatives, and the Caux Roundtable Principles.

References

Steiner, J. & Steiner, G. (2011) Business, government and society: a managerial perspective. 13^Th Ed. McGraw Hill.

Transparency International. (2013) Corruption perceptions index 2013: Now is the time for action. Retrieved from http://www.transparency.org/news/feature/cpi_2013_now_is_the_time_for_action References

International Committee of Women Leaders for Mental Health. Online. http://www.cartercenter.org/health/mental_health/intl_women.html

O’Hagan, M. (2009)Leadership for Empowerment and Equality:  A proposed model for mental health user/survivor leadership. International Journal of Leadership in Public Services Volume 5, Issue 4, December 2009.