Reflection on Ian’s blog post about Ethic

       Business ethic is always a popular topic in the field of economy. In the economic theory, it says that all the firms are focusing on profit maximizing. As the result, it creates many unethical activities such as the poisoned milk powder issue happened in China. In Ian’s blog, he mentioned that a dairy company named Sanlu. In order to understand this event more clearly, I had done some research. Sanlu is founded in 1956 and it was once being the top 3 milk powder companies in China, had a great reputation. There were many children raised by Sanlu’s milk powder. However, in 2008, sixteen infants who has been fed on milk powder produced by Sanlu, were diagnosed with kidney stones and many were dying. This serious issue attracted many attentions from different group of people and also media. Quickly, Chinese Government stepped in and started investigating. They found that Sanlu has been adding a chemical called Melamine into their product. The effect of that chemical is to increase protein content, however, It has negative impact to human body, specially to children whose bodies are still growing. After the exposure of this, Sanlu’s market share shrieked and disappeared from market.

       This is a good example of illustrating the goal of each private company: companies trying to minimize their cost at same time maximize their revenue. This specific example also prove that companies will use different strategies to reach their goal. Sometimes, company may choose wrong path and end up destroying themselves. However, if company has clear goal and always operate ethically, they might not be the most profitable one, but look at long term development, they will make more money than those who focus on short term profit and act unethically.