ETHICS,CSR & CORPORATE BEHAVIOR

Are you aware?

Colgate worldwide toothpaste market share is 44.4% Colgate Total has a formula which can prevent gingivitis The top selling toothpaste brand Contains triclosan Suspected to be an endocrine disruptor

Source:http://business-ethics.com/2010/10/03/5050-controversial-chemical-poses-disclosurechallenge-for-colgate-palmolive/

What would be your advice to Colgate?

Inform its customers that a key ingredient of its product is facing questions? Amend its marketing? Play an active role in the scientific debate? Publicly defend its turf? Simply do nothing and wait?

Going BANANAS

Going BANANAS : The issue

ASDA : chain of super markets in U.K Part of Wal-Mart In sep-oct 2009, ASDA cut its banana prices six times in 6 weeks Sold bananas at 38 pence a kilo (roughly 27 Rs per Kg) The bananas were sourced from Windward Islands

If you are the consumer

Would you like to know the true cost of your product? Would you be willing to pay a higher price? Will you boycott the product altogether as a protest measure? Or can you think off buycott?

Based on the earlier highlighted issues

Do you think the actions by the companies involved are ethical? What would you classify as an ethical response in these situations?

Based on our understanding

What is ethics?

When the company apply some set of standards or norms as a part of their responsibility we can call them ethical code of conduct of business. Ethics shows a corporation how to behave properly in their all business and operations. Ethics is the set of rules prescribing what is good or evil, or what is right or wrong for people.

The essence of business ethics

Honesty Confidence Respect and Fair acting in all circumstances Is business ethics

A natural phenomenon Or a structured process

Why ethical philosophies are in light?

Can we ever forget this? All workers who were involved in cleaning up Exxon Valdez oil spill are dead now

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Ethics is concerned with the following:

Good vs Bad Right vs Wrong Fair vs Unfair Praise vs Blame

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Legal View

What are the differences between legal, social, and ethical responsibility?

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Legal View

What is implied by shareholder wealth maximization? Specifically, what does this perspective 'mean' for the interests of other stakeholders?

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Deontology:

An ethical theory that holds that actions are right or wrong independent of their consequences

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Does the contemplated action:

Conform to important principles?

Ethical Decision-making Model

1
principles

outcomes
fairness caring liberty

character
sustainability

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Problem:

It is not clear on what basis non-humans can be considered to have rights

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Utilitarianism:

An ethical theory that holds that actions are right if they produce, or tend to produce, the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of persons

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Does the contemplated action:

Conform to important principles? Create more good than harm?

Ethical Decision-making Model

1
principles

outcomes
fairness caring liberty

character
sustainability

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Problem:

This perspective only recognizes the instrumental value of goods

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Justice:

Consists in giving each person his or her due, treating equals equally and unequals unequally

Distributive Procedural Compensatory Retributive

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Does the contemplated action:

Conform to important principles? Create more good than harm? Lead to fair outcomes?

Ethical Decision-making Model

1
principles

outcomes
fairness caring liberty

character
sustainability

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Problem:

Focus is on persons, and giving them what they deserve based on merit

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Ethic of Care:

Asks us to recognize and take seriously the moral worth of relationships, particularly those characterized by caring

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Does the contemplated action:

Conform to important principles? Create more good than harm? Lead to fair outcomes? Promote caring relationships?

Ethical Decision-making Model

1
principles

outcomes
fairness caring liberty

character
sustainability

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Problem:

It is not clear what might be meant by caring for nonhumansor what it might mean for them to care for us

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Libertarianism:

Suggest right action consists in maximizing the capacity for free, informed personal choice

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Does the contemplated action:

Conform to important principles? Create more good than harm? Lead to fair outcomes? Promote caring relationships? Advance personal liberty?

Ethical Decision-making Model

1
principles

outcomes
fairness caring liberty

character
sustainability

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Problem:

Non-humans are not considered to have choices in the way in which humans do, and therefore are not privileged with liberty

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Virtue theory:

Focus is on achieving our personal ethical ideala matter of who we are, not what we do

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Does the contemplated action:

Conform to important principles? Create more good than harm? Lead to fair outcomes? Promote caring relationships? Advance personal liberty? Stimulate personal ideals?

Ethical Decision-making Model

1
principles

outcomes
fairness caring liberty

character
sustainability

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Problem:

Who we are in an ideal sense may have little or no relation with the external world

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Legal View

And to compound the problem...what of the entity known as the corporation?

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Legal View

What is a corporation?

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Social View

Corporations are not human beings. The differences between human individuals and corporations, other formal organizations, and nations are significant from a moral point of view and from the point of view of moral responsibility.

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Social View

A corporation as such has no conscience, no feelings, no consciousness of its own. It has a conscience only to the extent that those who make it up act for it in such a way as to evince something comparable to conscience.

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Social View

Because a corporation only acts through those who act for it, it is the latter who must assume responsibility for the corporation.

Business Ethics/Corporate Social Responsibility Overview

The exclusively economic definition of the purpose of the corporation is a deadly oversimplification, allowing overemphasis on self-interest at the expense of consideration of others.
--Kenneth Andrews

Business Ethics/Corporate Social Responsibility Overview

Manought to regard himself, not as something separated and detached, but as a citizen of the world, a member of the vast commonwealth of natureto the interest of this great community, he ought at all times to be willing that his own little interest should be sacrificed.
--Adam Smith

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Land Ethic:

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the beauty, stability, and integrity of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View

Does the contemplated action:

Conform to important principles? Create more good than harm? Lead to fair outcomes? Promote caring relationships? Advance personal liberty? Stimulate personal ideals? Contribute to sustainability?

Ethical Decision-making Model

1
principles

outcomes
fairness caring liberty

character
sustainability

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: Mindwalk

Locke believes land that is left "wholly to nature" is "waste." How does this viewpoint compare with the attitudes of today's American businesses? Give examples.

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: Mindwalk

One of the distinguishing characteristics of any social system is the way in which property is owned and transferred from one party to another. What are the socio-political implications of community property ownership? Of private property ownership?

Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: Mindwalk

If the best way to insure adequate treatment of the environment is through some form of community ownership, can we conclude socialism is a better political system for ensuring the protection of nature? What evidence do we have for this conclusion? Perhaps a hybrid system would be a good framework for preserving the environment. Either "community owned, individually managed" or "individually owned, managed for the community." What type of system do you recommend?