Unethical Values Within De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited
De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited is a South African-based mining and trading company, which controls the flow of diamonds in the United States marketplace (Aurora, 2008). De Beers distributes diamonds, ships them, and distributes them to significant intermediaries, wholesalers and retailers (Atkinson, 2000).
1. Unethical behaviour: Unfair trading and competition
The first unethical conduct identified within the De Beers example is unfair trading and competition, particularly in the formation of cartels. Unfair competition is unethical in terms of the Teleological Framework, as it focuses on the negative result of the conduct of an individual or company as a juristic person, which forms the basis of self-interest (ethical egoism), thereby going against the rights of others (Stanwick & Stanwick, 2009).
This section will briefly explain the De Beers example of this form of unethical conduct, and look at ways in which De Beers could redeem their reputation. We will begin with the definition of a cartel.
A cartel is a group of people, organisations, or companies that cooperate together to control production, marketing, and pricing of a product (Smith, 2003). Cartels are an example of unethical conduct and are thus explicitly illegal under antitrust laws in many countries of the world, as they eliminate fair market competition. A cartel’s biggest effect is driving the price of a commodity up and well beyond what is considered a reasonable and fair market value; this causes an artificially inflated price. Since these organisations control the level of production, they are able to decide what is available in the market, and as a result they can manipulate the market by lowering production, raising prices, and making it difficult to obtain commodities. This could be harmful to other organisations and