The working conditions in factories (click to show the article!)
Business Ethics as I understand it is the behaviors of the business that follow the social morality and do not break the law. Every company, big or small, is supposed to obey the rule of the society. However, From the view in a book called <Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance>, the editor believed that “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Profits”which may cause conflicts while pursing the biggest interest.
In the case of working conditions in factories, Apple was thought to be the ‘evil’ in this area because of the scandal(‘Unethical supply chains’) exposed several yeas ago. Clearly, Apple did break the rules of society. However, considering the statement of the book, Apple was actually performed the social responsibility but obviously, in a wrong way. It would be really hard to take balance between profits and ethic because minimizing the cost of production usually means hiring under-aged people, working overtime with inadequate pay or even working in unventilated rooms. All this would be harmful to the employers but could achieve high profit!
Besides, even though the government set rules and regulations to enforce the company, some problems may still emerge like corruption and fraud. What’s more, breaking the rules sometime seems inevitable, takeTimberland, a boot-maker and vocal supporter of ethical working practices, as an example, said that “’some of our procedures were making it difficult for factories to control working hours’, including developing a huge number of new styles and the simultaneous launch of many new products.”
Therefore,It is still a complicated problem for companies to decide their behaviors to reach the requirement.