Abstract In this paper I will analyze the case study of Mattel Inc. and their Global Manufacturing Principles (GMP) and applying it to three different virtue ethics; fairness, honesty and justice. Then I will apply deontology, “always act in such a way that you can also will that the maxim of your action should become a universal law. Public concerns about worker exploitation and environmental degradation arose with the expansion of outsourcing and production in emerging economies where poverty, abundant labor, and need for job creation provided unprecedented opportunities for large multinational corporation (MNCs) to shift production from high-wage countries to low-wage countries. Starting with isolated complaints from civil society organizations, human rights groups, and organized labor in the mid-eighties, the anti-sweatshop movement became a major force by early nineties in the United States, Canada, Europe, and other industrially advanced countries. Global companies were under fire for operating factories with working conditions that violated basic human rights and labor laws in terms of wages and working conditions. Instances of worker exploitation and employment of underage workers were widespread. Mattel was in the middle of all of this and had also taken steps to respond to public concerns with regard to sweatshop-like conditions and worker exploitation in toy manufacturing factories in China and other developing countries. These efforts were quite similar to those of other industries in that codes of conduct were created with tremendous fanfare but with insufficient effort to improve and monitor actual working conditions in those factories. I will show how Mattel attempted “to do the right thing” and put virtue ethics like fairness, honesty and justice to work but in the end fell short.
Fairness
Children learn early on what they