Monthly Archives: September 2014

Disney has recently sold their rights to toys from their movie Frozen to toy company Hasbro. The toy rights for Frozen currently belong to Mattel but will shift to Hasbro staring in 2016. The agreement also includes the clothing and accessories for the dolls. This has caused Mattel’s stock price to fall and Hasbro’s to rise. This reflects badly on Disney for me because they are using their brand name to make them money; they already had a good deal with Mattel for the Frozen dolls so there was no need to change it. Manufacturers of toys will always want to have the rights to anything from Disney as they are such a well-known name worldwide. Even if Mattel was angry at Disney for doing this they won’t turn down any future offers from Disney for manufacturing rights as they know if they say no that Disney can just go to Hasbro or another toy manufacturer and sell the rights to them. I believe that once Disney has made a deal with a manufacturer they should stick to that deal and not be able to pull out and sell to another company. By doing this Disney is just using their manufacturers to see who they can get the best deal from and to me this goes against the ethics of business which I don’t believe is right.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/hasbro-locks-rights-to-make-frozen-dolls-in-2016-1.2022309

As certain food products become more and more popular in first-world countries, people don’t think about the effect that happens in the countries they originate from. The rise in popularity in quinoa has caused a rise in the price of quinoa. This has resulted in the indigenous people in South America not being able to afford to buy it anymore, even though it has been a staple in their diets for centuries. Milton Friedman said “there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” The companies that are producing and selling quinoa are going against this statement because they are ultimately committing an act of fraud against the South Americans who they are purchasing from. They are purely looking at the financial gain they are receiving from its popularity. However, the company Runa whose “revenue jumped from $800,000 in 2012 to $2.5-million last year“ is complying by Friedman’s statement in that they are very focused on the ethics side of their business by ensuring that not only their suppliers of guayasa are benefiting from the increase in popularity of the product but all of their stakeholders are benefiting.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/food-trends/ditch-your-morning-java-and-smell-the-guayusa/article20495025/