Ethical Global Corporate Responsibility - Coursework Example

Name Institution Course Date Introduction The occurrence at Rana Plaza recently has raised concern from many organizations that deal with business ethics. In general, Multinational Corporations do not just aim at making profits and increasing sales but rather have an additional social, moral and ethical responsibility as they do their business in the under developed countries. Each Corporation may define its moral and ethical responsibility in its way but all in all there are universal ethical cords that these corporations need to adhere to regardless of their different operations, some of the main principles in regard to ethics include utilitarianism, the principle of Kantianism and observation of justice and the stimulated rights in every situation. For many corporations it always seems difficult to put limits to their making of profits and focusing on their ethics. They instead focus too much on growth of their sales and fail to pay attention to their ethical responsibility. Response to the Rana Plaza incident As much as Rana Plaza was playing a great role in giving employment to the people in society and making cheap clothes, its management failed to fully adhere to the universal requirements of ethical conduct of the business. A clear analysis of the universal principles of ethnic conduct of a business which include upholding values which would help fulfil the principles of utilitarianism, justice, Kantianism, and individual rights brings out areas where Rana Plaza failed. Some of the core values that any multinational corporation is to uphold in its operations include happiness; a state that a person feels thy are well both mentally and emotionally and they are joyous even as they interact with other people, respect; the conduct of treating and appreciating a person as they are and protecting their esteem, fairness; treating people equally in terms of giving them their rights and in acts concerning justice, responsibility; performing as the society and its rules expect one to behave and a person being ready to take consequences of his or her own consequences, honesty; the act of having sincere and truthful dealings with other people, and integrity; the act of not compromising any act that is against the stipulated laws in the society regardless of the consequences or benefits attached to an action. With regard to the above mentioned values Rana Plaza failed to uphold happiness. Most of the workers wags did not satisfy them. The management forced the workers to work for long hours and paid them peanuts. The morning before the collapse of the building the management forced the workers into the building threatening to sack those who did not work. The workers therefore worked in fear rather than freewill. The management also failed in terms of respecting the workers. For instance, they did not respect the workers fears about the anticipated collapse of the building but forced them to work. Rana Plaza also failed to uphold the value of fairness in terms of the salaries that they paid the workers and the conditions that the management subjected its workers to. In terms of responsibility, the customers of Rana Plaza failed as they tried to distance themselves from Rana Plaza to evade any form of compensation that they were to pay as the main stakeholders in Rana. Also, the owner of Rana tries to flee from the country instead of taking responsibility of the harm that he has contributed to. In terms of integrity, Rana Plaza fails because it pays very little wages to the workers, employs underage workers, and the owner makes an eight storey building instead of a five storey building risking the lives of the workers. In failing to uphold the value of happiness, Rana Plaza failed to fulfil the utilitarianism principle that states that a corporation should aim at fulfilling the greatest amount of happiness to the largest number of people as much as possible and at all times. It mainly focused on the happiness of the organizations that depended on what it produced failing to attend to the needs with regard to happiness concerning their workers. Instead of improving the economy of the people in its location, it took advantage of their willingness to provide chap labour. In failing to uphold the value of respect, Rana Plaza failed to meet the principle of Kantianism. It did not meet the basic requirements of its workers, it made them work for very long hours and paid them peanuts. It generally did not respect humanity. The management went to an extend of forcing people into a cracked building, risking their lives. In failing to uphold integrity and fairness, Rana Plaza fails to meet the principle of justice. It does not treat the people equally. For instance, the managers mistreat the workers and fail to recognize that they are all human beings. The work environment of the workers is risky, for instance, the building they work is not safe for them. According to the reasons for its initial formation, the building was for shops and offices. Instead the owners make it to support very heavy machinery and a large number of workers, the owner is irresponsible because he authorises the builders to add three additional storeys which had not been planned for as the builders laid foundations. Failing to uphold integrity and responsibility contributes to Rana Plaza’s failure to uphold the rights of its workers. For instance in terms of the working conditions and wages of the employees are not satisfactory. After the incident, some organizations which were to compensate the workers distance themselves from Rana Plaza. Rana Plaza compensates some of the workers with a few hundred dollars, this is against their rights as that money could not compare to the number of lives lost during the collapse and the parts of the body that the employees lost in the incident. The Moral Minimum For any corporation, including Rana Plaza, the moral minimum is that the law allows it to increase its sales and make profits; however, as it makes profits, the corporation should ensure that it does not hurt the people working within it and those working without it. Rana was supposed to have a negative injunction to its workers, this means it was supposed to add value rather than harm to its employees and the society. It however concentrates so much on the sales and profits and forgets to attend to the needs of its employees. In the end Ray Plaza ends up hurting its employees (Boatright, 2003). The corporations also have a duty to affirm their duties, that is, in connection to the society that surrounds the corporation. For any economic mind, the location of Rana Plaza could be accompanied with economic development in the surrounding areas. Rana Plaza however focuses on manipulating the employee’s cheap labour, and takes advantage of their illiteracy and lack of knowledge on their rights. At the end it costs the society’s life as it rips them off their reliable women and causes death of many mothers (Simon, Powers & Gunneman, 1972). Corporations also need to uphold Kew Gardens principles as they carry out their operations. For instance if Rana Plaza upheld these principle, it could limit some degree of harm that it caused to its workers. Kew Gardens principles include extreme need: the needs of a person act as a driving force for the person to work to achieve those needs, proximity; if a person is close to a problem or if the problem affects the people that one is close to there is an inner drive in the person to find the solution to the problem, capacity, capability; as much as anyone may want to do an action to help another person or to solve a problem, he or she needs to have the capability of taking the action, and will not grieve unwarranted loss; in case there is no one to help find a solution for a problem, a person may be willing to take the risk to solve the problem in order to save the situation. Rana Plaza needed to understand these principles because they drove both the company and its workers. It would therefore be able to avoid harming the people that it had employed as much as possible (Simon, Powers & Gunneman, 1972). Any corporation needs to adhere to the code of conduct required in operating a business. Some of the common things stipulated in the code of conduct of corporations are with regard to how corporations are to treat their employees and the relationship that there is to be between the employer and employees. This narrows down to the values that a corporation such as Rana Plaza is to uphold. Adhering to a code of conduct would help Rana Plaza to achieve its Moral minimum. Multinational Corporations’ application of De George’s five guidelines De George outlines various guidelines that he says that If Multinational corporations adhere to them; they could reduce the number of blames that least developed countries attribute to them. Some of the ethical challenges that LDC’s blame MNC’s for are: the MNC’s cause poverty and a lot of suffering to LDC’s instead of improving the LDC’s standard of living. Instead of MNC’s proving employment in the developing countries, they hire labour from their own countries. The MNC’s spoil the culture in developing countries and establish their own cultures that they believe to be superior. The MNC’s take advantage of the developing countries’ governments to achieve their own selfish interests and not to protect the developing countries’ needs. According to De George the MNC’s should beware that most of the dilemmas that they face are false and are as a result of the very high standards of morality that the United States has come up with. For him the standards are very admirable but it is hard for an MNC to achieve them. MNC’s should appreciate the fact that each country has their own diverse cultures and values that they uphold and should therefore should avoid harming countries directly, can harm them indirectly if they cannot avoid harm, should endeavour to do a higher capacity of good than harm for or in the country hosting them, respect the rights of their employees, and pay the accurate amount of taxes to the host country government. He also argues that most of the dilemmas that MNC’s suffer are very general and therefore they should not affect the MNC’s operations unless they are specifically directed towards a specific MNC say, those that deal with agriculture. The host countries may be mean to MNC’s because the countries do not have a just background. The MNC’s should meet their moral obligations; they should not however allow the countries to blame them for problems they face because the countries have their own governments which have to attend to these problems in their own countries. His guidelines support respect for the culture and laws of the developing countries in some way because he allows MNCs to influence culture in some way indirectly. Second, although he tries to support utilitarianism, in a way he encourages harm by saying that MNCs can ensure they do more good than harm. He also goes against the moral minimum principle. He encourages the respect of human rights in the MNCs. In my view, these principles are not good enough for Rana Plaza to adopt because they do not fully support the values that any corporation needs to uphold and the four principles of utilitarianism, Kantianism, rights, and justice. Usefulness of a universal code of conduct for MNCs Creating a universal code of conduct for all MNCs will be effective on condition that the code of conduct favours the country it is to operate in or that the universal code of conduct are in a way that the different countries and cultures can accommodate them. Each country will however need to make adjustments to the universal code of conduct to enable the code fit into each individual country. The advantage with this type of system is that it will provide a basis under which the multinational corporations operate. This means it will set the limits under which the corporations operate. For instance, if this were to be the case in Rana Plaza it would have helped reduce the case of employee mistreatment this is because it could lay a basis of behaviour for both the employers and the employees in the organization. The problem of such a kind of setting is that it only addresses the general sets of behaviour and may not go into specifics which may vary from country to country. In such a case therefore ach country would prefer coming up with its own code of conduct and would cause confusion (Gilman, Stuart 2005). Inspirational argument to GAEMCI stakeholders For a business to be successful, it should not just concentrate on the cash it gets from selling its products. There is therefore more to a business rather than profits. A business has to make profits for its running. However, at the same time it should put it in mind that it has employees who are looking up to it. It should therefore ensure that the employees are satisfied and happy. There is also an aspect of the business meeting its social responsibilities. These are aspects that do not have to necessarily benefit the multinational corporation directly but will help in creating goodwill for the corporation. This also helps the host country to focus on the positive side of the multinational corporations rather than its negatives. A business should therefore make profits in its operations, and as it does so it needs to uphold integrity, honesty, responsibility, respect, and happy employees. It should uphold the four principles of justice, meeting the rights of the employees, utilitarianism, and Kantianism. It should avoid as much as possible to cause harm to the people in the environment within which it is operating. The society will term such a business as beneficial and will work with them towards achieving the goals of the multinational corporation and developing the economy of the place that it exists. Conclusion This paper has focused on the various business ethics that multinational corporations should focus on while carrying out their activities in other countries. Ethics range from the values that these multinational corporations should uphold which include, honesty, fairness, integrity, happiness, responsibility and respect. We have seen that these values play a major role towards making the multinational corporation to meet the four basic principles, that is utilitarianism; a corporation should aim at fulfilling the greatest amount of happiness to the largest number of people as much as possible and at all times, Kantianism; meeting the basic needs of individuals, justice; upholding integrity and treating people fairly with regard to the laws, and rights; meeting the basic rights of the workers in the organization. Finally, it focuses on the multinational moral minimum which states that the corporation can make profits but ensure that in the process of making these profits it does not harm individuals working either within or without the organization. References Adams, D.M. & Maine, E.W. (1998). Business ethics for the 21st Century (pp. 10-18). Mayfield Publishing. 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