...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...
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...LEG500 Assignment 3 - Ethics and Corporate Responsibility in the Workplace and the World Introduction It is the responsibility of companies today to promote responsible business practices at every level of the company. Business should be conducted ethically and honestly. Companies should also foster environments that promote ethical conduct and comply with all requirements of the law that they fall under. This paper will examine the ethical practices of Pharmacies. Stakeholders will be identified, and several scenarios will be evaluated and critiqued. Who are the stakeholders of the Pharmacies co? What are their key characteristics? The stakeholders in this scenario include Pharmacies, a successful pharmaceutical company, Comp CARE, a subsidiary of Pharmacies, Well co, a large drugstore chain, the employees of the various companies, the African nation of Colberia and the Colberians. All of these stakeholders have a stake in the outcome. Stakeholders include people living with disease or illness, scientific and clinical experts representing Better Pharmacare Coalition member organizations. ” BC Pharmacies, together with these and other stakeholders as required, should define the process of decision-making from beginning to end” (http://www.betterpharmacare.org/about-corevalues.cfm). Pharmacies stakeholders include patients and patient groups, community and hospital pharmacists, physicians, the College of Pharmacists of B.C., the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B...
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...In our society, we as consumers are continuously being bombarded by advertising ads on T.V and billboards and highways to promote the latest product. A user isn’t always looking at the product or reading product safety warning on the labels; they are only looking at who and what athlete and movie star promotes this latest product. For example, Pepsi, and always uses high profile athletes or famous people to promote its product. These ads provide a sublime message. These Ads are gear to get the consumer to buy their product. In order for me to be like LeBron James, I have to drink Gatorade. There has been a major shift over the last couple of years in product safety. According to Chandra, “product safety has become a major problem for businessmen, consumers and the government” (Chandran, 1979). Advertising can be both influential and persuasive. It presents an issue of product safety. The Consumer Product Safety Commission threatened to ask Congress to give it greater authority. Advertising is protected under the First Amendment, but there has to be limits. “While advertising does not directly contribute to all product related accidents, it does, inadvertently, have the power to promote unsafe behavior” (Chandran, 1979). Advertising indirectly contributes to the problem of consumer product safety. “Advertisers and advertising agencies should therefore do more to educate consumers in a safe and prudent use of products that are potentially hazardous for several reasons” (Chandran...
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...In our society, we as consumers are continuously being bombarded by advertising ads on T.V and billboards and highways to promote the latest product. A user isn’t always looking at the product or reading product safety warning on the labels; they are only looking at who and what athlete and movie star promotes this latest product. For example, Pepsi, and always uses high profile athletes or famous people to promote its product. These ads provide a sublime message. These Ads are gear to get the consumer to buy their product. In order for me to be like LeBron James, I have to drink Gatorade. There has been a major shift over the last couple of years in product safety. According to Chandra, “product safety has become a major problem for businessmen, consumers and the government” (Chandran, 1979). Advertising can be both influential and persuasive. It presents an issue of product safety. The Consumer Product Safety Commission threatened to ask Congress to give it greater authority. Advertising is protected under the First Amendment, but there has to be limits. “While advertising does not directly contribute to all product related accidents, it does, inadvertently, have the power to promote unsafe behavior” (Chandran, 1979). Advertising indirectly contributes to the problem of consumer product safety. “Advertisers and advertising agencies should therefore do more to educate consumers in a safe and prudent use of products that are potentially hazardous for several reasons” (Chandran...
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...IFRS: FASB and IASB Fair value measurements provide users of financial statements with an accurate picture of the value of a company’s assets. Both IFRS and GAAP require firms to include information regarding fair value measurement practices in the notes of financial statements. Under either system, companies will be required to report assets at either book value or fair value, depending on the situation. As a general rule of thumb, all assets in the same class must receive the same valuation treatment. In regards to the value of receivables, IRFS uses a two- tiered method that first analyzes individual receivables, and then looks at receivables as whole to determine if there is any impairment. Basic accounting and reporting issues related to recognition and measurement of receivables, allowance accounts, recording discounts, the allowance method to account for bad debt and factoring are pretty much all the same between GAAP and IFRS. However, IASB (International Accounting Standards Board) and FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) are taking steps by working to implement fair value measurement, the amount they currently could be sold for, for financial instruments. The FASB and IASB are facing opposition from various factors thus have adopted a piecemeal approach. Step one is to disclose the fair value information in the notes, and second step is the fair market option which permits companies to record some type of financial instrument at fair value in financial statements...
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...Week 7 Assignment 3 - LEG 500 August 15, 2014 PharmaCARE Company is one of the leading world pharmaceutical companies, that enjoys an honest name of a caring and well-run company and that act ethically toward its stakeholders. It provides with the high-quality products and saves people’s lives increasing its quality. However, the case with the African nation of Colberia, where the PharmaCARE holds its big manufacturing object, raise community fears as for the unethical attitude toward the indigenous population of this land. The following paper will illustrate the main unethical considerations of the Company, will describe the key characteristics of its stakeholders, and will illustrate the human rights issues presented by PharmaCARE's treatment. The paper will also suggest the changes that PharmaCARE can perform to be more ethical. The key characteristics of the stakeholders within the PharmaCARE PharmaCARE follows the open-door policy and culture among its employees. It stands for the employment equity and promotes the development and progress of its people. The company conducts workshops and training sessions to create its employees’ awareness of and ensures with the training of new processes and new technology that it establishes. It often presents health care staff with the challenging issues to ensure the staff to be aware of new medication nutritional care, some potential side effects or...
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...the goodwill of the people he must not worry about conspiracies; but when the people are hostile and regard him with hatred he must go in fear of everything and everyone. Well-organized states and wise princes have always taken great pains not to make the nobles despair, and to satisfy the people and keep them content; this is one of the most important tasks a prince must undertake.’ (Machiavelli, 1513) A. The extract from Machiavelli’s, The Prince demonstrates a strong correlation to the issues involved in the business activities of modern day MNCs and the concept of ethical leadership. According to Resick, Hanges, Dickson, & Mitcheluson (2006), analysing data from the global leadership and organizational effectiveness (GLOBE) project, there were four key dimensions identified as global ethical leadership: character/integrity, altruism, collective motivation and encouragement. Although these were all universally recognised characteristics the degree to which these were endorsed and the significance attached to key aspects varied across different cultures. From the extract the...
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...been some unethical behavior going on that involves issues relating to marketing and advertising, intellectual property, and regulation of product safety. This paper will discuss some ethical issues relating to marketing and advertising, intellectual property, and regulation of product safety; argue for or against Direct-to-Consumer marketing by drug companies; determine who regulates compounding pharmacies under the current regulatory scheme, what the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) could/should have done in this scenario, and whether the FDA should be granted more power over compounding pharmacies; decide whether PharmaCare’s use of Colberian intellectual property would be ethical in accordance with utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, ethics of care, my own moral/ethical compass; analyze the way PharmaCare uses U.S. law to protect its own intellectual property while co-opting intellectual property in Colberia; suggest three ways the company could compensate the people and nation of Colberia for the use of its intellectual property and the damage to its environment; compare...
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...to include the transaction of goods and services at the individual, corporate, and international level of exchange. PRIMARY ETHICAL CONSTRUCTS 1.The Question of Generality: Can the rules of right conduct that apply to individuals be generalized to collective entities, such as corporations? 2. The Question of Responsibility: Can a corporation have moral responsibility? If so, how is responsibility to be diffused and distributed throughout the corporate hierarchical structure? 3. The Question of Liability: Provided that corporations can be meaningfully said to be morally responsible, must their liability necessarily be proportional to their responsibility? 4. The Question of Allegiance: Do the commonly accepted personal virtues of loyalty, commitment, and devotion have a place in the employer/ employee dichotomy? Does a corporation have an obligation to provide for a worker based purely upon that worker’s loyalty to the corporation over many years – even if the continued employment of the worker is counter-productive? ETHICAL CONCEPTS IN BUSINESS 1. Conflict of Interest: A state of affairs is said to constitute a conflict of interests – or potential thereof – in a set of circumstances where the individual has the capacity to influence decisions that promote their self-interest but may have a detrimental impact upon the organization they belong to, or the well-being of some other group. Crucial to a charge of a conflict of interest is the reasonable...
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...at Hosur, Tamil Nadu, the 135,000 sq. ft. factory is equipped with the latest and most modern machinery and equipment. Tanishq has an exquisite range of gold, gems and diamond jewellery system prevalent in the country. It has set up production and sourcing bases with thorough research of the jewellery crafts in India. It introduced innovations like karat-meter, the only non-destructive means to check the purity of gold. It also introduced professional retailing in the un-organized jewellery bazaar, where women can shop with comfort and peace, without worrying about the purity of the jewellery they are buying. It has successfully taken up the challenge of transforming this frontier into a reliable consumer space by bringing to it all the virtues and benefits that branding offers. HISTORY: The Tanishq saga began in the early 1990s, primarily fuelled by the fabled TATA entrepreneurial spirit and partly forced by circumstance. The splendid Titan watches success story was already up and running, and happened to need more foreign exchange to purchase the imported components and machines required to keep up with the burgeoning watch production. But with India going through a foreign exchange crisis, there was no help coming in, forcing Titan to search for a business that would earn them the required foreign currency. Indian-made jewellery was already a big foreign currency earner and being strongly supported by the...
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...ETH/316 Michael Scott Due June 30, 2014 Question #1 Introduction Ethics are considered the science in which one bases their beliefs, while morals are the choices made based on those beliefs. To be considered a virtuous person one must understand and demonstrate the “acceptable” beliefs of their society, by maintaining their personal character traits and standards, and by making and demonstrating good choices in their personal and professional lives. A person who is ethical and moral may not be considered virtuous, because of the differences between the three concepts. Virtuous Virtuous is used to describe a person who strives for excellence, in both their ethical and moral behaviors. Virtue, demonstrated as one who has good character traits, is often associated with ethical and moral beliefs, which is necessary for people to function in society with distinction. Virtuous examples are demonstrated in one who shows honesty, forgiveness, kindness, and respectfulness; among other exemplary character traits. A person who is virtuous shows commitment to doing the right thing, no matter what the cost; personal or not. Someone who is virtuous does not bend to desires, urges, or impulses, but acts according to their principles and values. Ethics Ethics are the rules and principles that govern the actions of people in comparative societies, while morality may differ from person to person. Ethics are described in our reading as, “what constitutes right and wrong, or...
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...Assignment 3: Legal and Ethical Considerations in Marketing, Product Safety, and Intellectual Property Samuel Morgan Professor: Christina JG Williams, Esq. LEG 500 – Law, Ethics, and Corporate Governance May 21, 2015 Abstract The relationship between legal and ethics has long been strained and confusing to understand. In today’s business, ethics actually consist of a subset of major life values learned since birth. Many in business use these life values to make decisions that have been passed down from family, educational and religious institutions. However, the message is not the same and each business person will apply their own unique interpretation. Nevertheless, everyone must have an ethical base that applies to conduct in the business world and in personal life. Assignment 3: Legal and Ethical Considerations in Marketing, Product Safety, and Intellectual Property Legal and Ethical considerations are a viable element in marketing, product safety and intellectual property, yet there continues to be the secret and unpredictable element that each organization cannot control, the employee. Ethical or unethical behavior is not entirely an issue of the character of the employee; it is determined by a lot of factors. Employees or people are influenced by the forces surrounding them – their peers, their superiors, the reward system, group norms, and organizational policies and values. In this assignment, we will revisit the organization PharmaCARE...
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...INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS WHAT IS ETHICS Ethics is a major branch of philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life. It is significantly broader than the common conception of analyzing right and wrong. A central aspect of ethics is "the good life", the life worth living or life that is simply satisfying, which is held by many philosophers to be more important than moral conduct. Simply put, ethics involves learning what is right or wrong, and then doing the right thing -- but "the right thing" is not nearly as straightforward as conveyed in a great deal of business ethics literature. Most ethical dilemmas in the workplace are not simply a matter of "Should Bob steal from Jack?" or "Should Jack lie to his boss?" (Many ethicists assert there's always a right thing to do based on moral principle, and others believe the right thing to do depends on the situation -- ultimately it's up to the individual.) Many philosophers consider ethics to be the "science of conduct." Philosophers have been discussing ethics for at least 2500 years, since the time of Socrates and Plato. Many ethicists consider emerging ethical beliefs to be "state of the art" legal matters, i.e., what becomes an ethical guideline today is often translated to a law, regulation or rule tomorrow. Values which guide how we ought to behave are considered moral values, e.g., values such as respect, honesty, fairness, responsibility, etc. Statements around how these values are applied are sometimes called moral or ethical...
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...Legal and Ethical Considerations in Marketing, Product Safety, and Intellectual Property Three Ethical Issues When looking at PharmaCARE’s relationship with the Colberians, you see that the company’s treatment of the indigenous population is unethical. In terms of intellectual property, the scenario in Assignment 2 highlights the exploitation of the Colberians. While the indigenous population freely shares their information about their cures, the company exploits them by not compensating them for their shared knowledge. According to labor laws, companies should work ethically and treat all of their employees fair -- not equal, but fair. Some employees, based on their position and level of responsibility, should be paid more and should receive better perks than others. However, the company is earning millions of dollars from the knowledge being shared by the healers, and its executives live in luxury with swimming pools, tennis courts, and a golf course, while the Colberians continue to live in huts without electricity or running water. If the company compensated the healers for their intellectual property, the Colberians could improve their living conditions. PharmaCARE is taking advantage of this group of stakeholders because the healers are uneducated, ignorant to intellectual property laws, and do not know the true value of the information they are sharing with PharmaCARE. According to authors S.C. Jain and R. Bird, the Trade-Related Aspect of Intellectual Property...
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...success was based on being an exceptional technology/product follower with a mass production focus, future success would require technology/product leadership and a strong customer focus. One key characteristic of the historic success model was a rigid, authoritative organization and culture. In workshops with Samsung Semiconductor’s top executives, it became evident that a more fluid organization and culture is required for Samsung Semiconductor to achieve its future success model. Samsung Semiconductor recognized the need for guidance and facilitation in implementing a process to enable it to achieve this challenging vision. It turned to Arthur D. Little for assistance. The challenge for Arthur D. Little was to identify the critical cultural objectives on which to focus and the critical levers with which to implement those objectives. The Arthur D. Little case team worked side by side with the culture change process owner, Executive Managing Director Ho-Kyoon Chung, several executive advisers, and a cross-functional group of Samsung Semiconductor personnel. By employing shared-visioning techniques, this core team established the...
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