Business Ethics - Research Paper Example

While doing any business, it is needed that no laws are violated. Organizations should not rely on auditors, cops, manuals or ethics officers to incorporate ethics into the strategic activities, as values need to be a key component while formulating a strategy. Transparency should always be observed. Moreover, employee development should be one of the key objectives incorporating ethics as its important constituent – encouraging all staff members to be demanding as far as the ethical domain is concerned.

While assessing organizational performance at the end of the year, ethical behavior – that how it fared with others should be an important criterion. Although it is widely recognized by most corporations to incorporate social responsibility and ethical behavior in their day-to-day functioning, yet it is commonly observed that even large corporations have been often found flouting it. That means companies overstep ethical boundaries while fulfilling stakeholders’ agendas. The case of Nestle is worth elaborating here.

Nestle launched free distribution of baby milk powder in some of the African countries – making mothers dependable on Nestle’s infant formula until the time their milk dry up. This is essentially to promote their milk formula and increase their consumption. This is surely an unethical way to promote the company business in poor African countries. Unethical business practices came into limelight when the New Internationalist exposed Nestle’s unethical business practices, a way back, in 1973.

Nestle run elaborate publicity campaigns in third world countries where there is a huge market for baby milk powder. The campaign also aimed at changing cultural habits of the people such as breastfeeding to increase their sales. The unethical marketing practices of Nestle prevented breastfeeding to millions of infants causing malnutrition, underfeeding and making them prone to deadly diseases. As per James Grant, the Executive Director of UNICEF, breastfeeding could have saved lives of hundreds of thousands of infants in the 1980s (New Internationalist, 1982).

Wal-Mart is known as the largest retailer across the world; however, the point to be noted is how the company can behave so unethically towards its employees. In 2000, Deborah Shank, a 52-year old employee at Wal-Mart, got collided with a semi-trailer while at work and damaged her brain remaining in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She received $700,000 as the compensation from the trucking company. After meeting other expenses, a fund of $417,000 was kept in a special trust to take care of Shank.

However, after the period of six years, Wal-Mart sued Deborah for $470,000 that the company had spent on her treatment because the employment contract dictated that any compensation granted to an employee in an accident settlement case would belong to Wal-Mart. Deborah's economic status suddenly became precarious – fully dependent on social security scheme and Medicaid to meet her medical needs. In this particular case, Wal-Mart's behavior was entirely unethical towards Deborah who was the company’s ex-employee (Hynes, 2011).

Union Carbide, a large multinational company in 1980s (later taken over by Dow Chemical), is another glaring example of gross unethical business practices – violating all statutory safety norms that resulted into leakages of Methyl isocyanate, a deadly poisonous gas, killing