Ewww…thics

Ewww……thics.

Today this realm of Earth encompasses of countless businesses, innovative startups, life changing ideas which have led to an inordinate spring of development towards the highest yet there is sadness in the world……. WHY? because individualism has overpowered collectivism, people have become greedy for money and find it difficult to differentiate between good and bad morals. Ethics is defined as the moral principles that govern the behavior of an organization or an individual.

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Many organizations in this era focus only on making a profit by good or bad means and ignore the negative externalities which they can cause however, on the other hand, there are many non-profit organizations whose goal is the welfare of society and create positive externalities nevertheless the non-profit organizations occupy just the 1/10^th of the gigantic business world.

There are also for-profit organizations who have established policies that welfares the environment or the society which is an ethical behavior. Ethical behavior in the terms of business can also be said to satisfy the corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR is defined as a business approach that contributes to sustainable development by delivering economic, social and environmental benefits for all stakeholders. CSR is a concept with many definitions and practices.

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Below are some examples of ethical business practices:

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Rolex donates 90 % of its profits to the needy and poor.
Taco Bell offers a discount to its kind customers.
Apple Inc. conducts regular water and food checks for employees.
Google promotes “no plastic” hence have distributed google hands bags among the employees as a substitute for plastics.
Microsoft provides free medication to its employees at the headquarters.

Below are some examples of ethical business practices:

Thomas Edison/Radio Corporation of America – Attempting a monopoly of patents.
McDonalds used to use the same dishes to cook vegetarian and non-vegetarian food.
Toshiba decided to fudge its financial results.
Volkswagen cheats emissions tests
Exxon Mobil deliberately misleads the public about climate change.

About the Article

Apple relies on child slave labor that is working in dangerous conditions, for ten hours each day while being exposed to cancerous vapors. The conditions at the manufacturing plant Foxconn are bad enough that they had to install “anti-suicide nets.” The workers live in horrible conditions and experience unreasonable workloads and humiliating discipline. Apple has reduced some of their work with Foxconn, but they still rely primarily on them. This is an unethical practice by the organization as child labor is prohibited and the working conditions are harmful to the employees. Here Apple Inc. is taking advantage of not muck educated labor and is putting them to a job which can risk their lives and create a negative externality leading to the welfare loss to the society.

Though Apple Inc. relies on Foxconn but they cannot afford to risk their employee’s life, I would be better for the organization to let go of Foxconn which would help the brand image of Apple Inc. in the long term though the production would stop for a while but the cost in the long term would be reduced.

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