Introduction AES faces an ethical dilemma. India’s power plant development team can choose between using expensive technology, meeting U.S. environmental standards, or a cost cutting technology meeting local and less stringent standards yet allowing for contributions to other community needs surrounding the projected plant. “Although many people at AES felt that the company would be “selling out” if it did not maintain its strict commitment to the environment in the narrow senses, others felt that AES should expand its concerns to include people and their quality of life” (AES Global Values, 2000). This presents a major ethical dilemma of whether or not the company should continue its traditional focus on meeting “social responsibility” values through CO2-offset programs as the company expands worldwide.
Summarize the various issues regarding AES’s commitment to social responsibility
There are many issues regarding AES’s commitment to social responsibility, a core part of AES’s culture is the commitment to their shared principles or “corporate values.” These principles describe how the individuals at AES endeavor to commit themselves to the Company’s mission of serving the world by providing “safe, clean, reliable and inexpensive energy.”
The first and largest issue of AES’s commitment to social responsibility is that team members “felt that accepting a lower environmental standard in India - even one consistent with local and World Bank requirements - would be abandoning everything AES stood for.” The second issue is that AES, as a global company, should “maintain uniform standards worldwide” in order to uphold their commitment to social responsibility. If AES recognizes that one technology is cleaner than another, they should endeavor to commit themselves to providing the cleanest, safest technology possible to be considered truly socially responsible in