preview

Ethics and International Business Essays

Better Essays
Open Document

Ethics and International Business:
Finding the Lesser Evil

At the beginning of this course it was made apparent that the class was not meant to be a monologue by the instructor but a discussion. From the numerous discussions held in class, I have come to the belief that ethics in international business was the most significant topic discussed in this course.
Ethics in international business and the outsourcing of labor is a prevalent issue that affects not only the United States and our nation's economy, but also the economy of other countries. In a world where technology has made the whole world accessible, the global economy has become more and more important. The labor standard of the outsourcing companies also gets down to …show more content…

The standard of living in the developing countries as a whole is drastically lower than that of countries such as the United States, that one must expect the wages to be proportionally as low. On the other hand, an adversary of sweatshops could at the same time fight back in saying that it is the ethical responsibility of the multinational corporations to promote the positive development of the international economies. If the wages merely cover the cost of living, then growth cannot be expected. The issue of the positive growth of the economies also plays into the other arguments against sweatshops. Some would argue that sweatshops not only fail to promote positive growth but also cause negative growth and the reduction of living standards. The negative growth can be brought about by the depression of wages and increased repression to make countries appealing to multinational corporations. To counter the above additional accusations of economic decline, it can be said while the repression does exist in these countries, that economic growth that is brought about by sweatshops leads to decreased repression. However, if it is evident that repression does occur in these countries, the originally posed ethical question in international business as to whether our companies should conduct business in countries that do not uphold our ethical standards is brought about again. Of

Get Access