Ldc Ethical Issues

There are many opinions on the ethics of the Wal-Mart model, both favourable and unfavourable. The article “ROB Ranks Wal-Mart Among Canada’s Best Employers” (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 287) offers a favourable viewpoint of the model, and the article “The Cost of Walmartization” (McLachlan, 2009, pg. 288) offers an opposing unfavourable view. This paper discusses the theoretical approaches used in each article, along with the supporting evidence that was used in an effort to be convincing.

Dexter Roberts and Pete Engardio in “Secrets, Lies, and Sweatshops,” writes about the various struggles that the United States has with production factories overseas. Wal-Mart claims they have rules for the sweatshops to follow but China still violates the labor laws by hiring consultants to give tips to sneak around auditors. The American people enjoy their everyday items at a low price, which Wal-Mart demands to the sweatshops. The sweatshops are struggling to provide these low price items to Wal-Mart and keep their working conditions humane. Roberts and Engardio explain in the article how companies that have overseas production are attempting to provide the managers and employees with skills to make the overtime required more effective.

Target has suggested that its vendors create special products or prevent price comparisons to help decrease consumer show-rooming (Kinicki & Williams, 2013). Pressure of this sort could create opportunities for vendors to participate in unethical practices and could create a negative image for Target (McKay, Nitsch, & Peters, 2015). Although laws, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, are basic frameworks that business operations must comply with, there is no guideline that businesses have to follow when making business decisions. Furthermore, ethical behavior can be perceived by customers, investors, and society as corporate responsible while creating additional value for products or services (Kinicki et al., 2013). Target should ensure that it ethically follows all constraints of the law while considering the impacts its decisions will have on its stakeholders, and while fostering an image, responsibly by corporate.

However, this could not be more wrong. First off, all of the employees in other nations who flock to Wal-Mart’s factories have the choice to do so. Even though the wages paid in third world nations is inconceivable in United States, those wages will still increase the employee’s income, which in turn increases the employee’s standard of living. The increases in standards of living will lead to economic innovations and increased productivity/efficiency. This process of evolving mirrors that same steps that the United States went through in its early beginnings as well. Secondly, critics want Wal-Mart to enforce labor laws in its overseas factories that are consistent with United States. However, Vedder refutes this demand stating, “We have no more right to expect Wal-Mart to enforce Chinese labor laws than the Chinese have the right to enforce ours” (Vedder). Clearly, this criticism is without reason and impossible. In addition, the regulations and laws in third world countries are not kept up to date as well as in America, not everyone has a birth certificate or passport proving their age. It is unreasonable to assume that Wal-Mart would be able to verify the ages of every single employee in Indonesia or China. (Vedder)

Since 2008, McDonald’s and Walmart corporations have paid their employees’ by the same federal minimum wage amount of $7. 25 per hour (Friedman, 2015). Not until recently, news stations have reported that most McDonalds and Walmart employees live below the poverty line. In fact, McDonalds has started their own McResource Line to give their employees advice on how to provide for their families while living on a minimum wage budget. Soon after, the company renounced their website after the backlash it caused from the media. Therefore, McDonalds and Walmart decided to raise their minimum wage to $9 an hour (Gasparro and Morath, 2015; Friedman, 2015). After researching, I believe large corporations such as McDonalds and Walmart should have to pay living wages, and it is extremely unethical for these

According to the World Bank, from 1993 to 1998, poverty rate has reduced by 14 percent in developing countries, similar to about 107 million people. This may result from receiving foreign investment that plays an important role in local economy growth. For example, the proportion of population living in poverty in India decreased by half in the two decades, from the 1970s to 1990s, while the number of Chinese in poverty declined by approximately 210 million during twenty-one years, from 1978 to 1999 (Healey 2008). In other words, the standard of living is improving due to the benefits of international economic activities.

2The main issues that have been described in these 2 articles, is that cheap labor in these countries like India and Pakistan drives them to success. Every day thousands of people are injured and murdered to for fill our needs. In both articles, it talks about the social and environmental cost, and how it is affecting the people in their but also, overseas.

Using cheap labor from the poor countries, US companies gain the massive profit. For example, Walmart is the biggest retailer in America, because the most products of Walmart import from China. To against the competitors, Walmart reduces the prices, but to hold profit stable, the company has to use the cheap labor. Walmart has the biggest numbers of employees, which is over one million workers, but the wage and working condition are horrible. The hourly wage is three cents, and the best workers receive ten cents. Walmart’s workers also include children and women, and these workers even get paid less than a man, even though they have the same amount of work. Walmart is famous with the cheap electronic products, but the quality isn’t good as

It is also important to note that quite a number of multinational corporations have in the past setup operations in developing nations in an attempt to make cost savings especially in terms of labor and production costs. With a growing

Analyze two (2) of the legal mandates that workers and U.S government has accused Walmart of violating. Provide an explanation as to why these legal mandates were violated, citing specific violations. Walmart claimed that the closing of a unionized store in Quebec was closed for economic reason. However those claims were denied because there was evidence that the store would reopen. The finding were that the court did not find the closing of the store in to be real, genuine and definitive under the

Businesses should have certain ethical guidelines to enforce manufacturers to adhere to or refuse to do business with these manufacturers if certain standards cannot be met. However, the only thing Wal-Mart is interested in is making a profit and apparently at any cost and in any conditions. There should be more follow through with government regulations and importing of said merchandise to discourage such participation in such practices. While other retailers have assisted to make conditions better in finding solutions to make these factories better for their workers and want to contribute financially to improve the environment, “but Wal-Mart declined to participate in the 2011 in relation to the fire related deaths and injuries, because it would increase the company’s cost documented by Senior Official of Bangladesh’s ministry of Labor and Employment” (Sethi).

Although, if people keep agreeing to work for minimum wage then these higher wages will never be set because the economic marketplace knows that it can increase its profit margin by paying workers less which is what it will always try to do. Looking at the article, it can be seen that if Wal-Mart were to raise there minimum wage to the acceptable amount of twelve dollars ($12.00) an hour, the corporation would take a $3.21 billion dollar hit to their checkbooks. Even if immigrants were the ones who were always sweeping the market to its lowest paying profit margin they are still providing a benefit to corporations which is therefore providing a benefit to everyone who interacts with that corporation and should it be a corporation like that of Wal-Mart a plethora of people are receiving the benefits while much fewer are being harmed.

This report analyzes the ethical dilemma faced by Jextra’s country manager, Tom Chong, who was responsible for Neighbourhood Markets in Malaysia. Jextra Stores was a Hong Kong based company that operated retail stores in China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam. In 2005, the company successfully entered Malaysia, operating supermarkets under the name of Neighborhood Markets (Inkpen, 2010). Jextra identified a promising site in Klang, near the capital of Kuala Lumpur, to open a new supermarket (Inkpen, 2010). Mr. Chong needs to evaluate a proposal made by the Mayor of Kang, which might be considered bribery. In this case, Mr. Chong faces social and ethical

10 2.2.1. The Doubled Diamond vs. a Single National Diamond ................................. 11 2.2.2. The Role of the Multinational Enterprises (MNE’s) as Empowering Developing Countries rather than Constraining their Growth.................................. 12 3. Research Setting: Why Use Mexico to Study Porter’s Diamond? ............................... 17 4. Research Questions....................................................................................................... 19 5. Methodology ................................................................................................................. 20 5.1. Positioning the International Competitiveness of the Industry.............................. 22 5.2. Addressing the Research Questions....................................................................... 23 6. Results........................................................................................................................... 28 6.1. The Competitiveness of the Automobile Industry in Mexico................................ 28 6.2. Positioning the Industry as Internationally Competitive ....................................... 29 6.3. Using Porter’s Diamond to Assess Sources of Competitive Advantage in the Automobile Industry in Mexico: 1993-2003. ............................................................... 39 6.3.1. Factor

Developing country MNCs may have more experience as they used to doing so at home where home governments do not supply them goods. Therefore, MNCs may suffer for the ineffectiveness of the government which can lead to unexpected cost and also size of the operations being limited in the country. LDCs have lower government effectiveness which causes the government systems and establishments are slow and politically dependant, thus lead to lack of high quality of public goods.