Lies And Sweatshops

Large corporations such as Nike, Gap, and Reebok and many others from the United States have moved their factories to undeveloped nations; barely pay their employees enough to live on. Countries such as China, Indonesia, and Haiti have readily abundant cheap labor. There should be labor laws or an obligation of respecting workers to provide decent working conditions, fair wages, and safety standards.

Moreover, the growing number of conscience consumers was highlighted in a recent Bursen-Marsteller report; “people will more likely choose a product that supports a social cause when choosing between otherwise similar products” (Penn, Schoen & Berland, 2010). These average consumers daily decisions are slowly but surely being influenced by social concern and responsibility. Finally, the critical issue for Company Q is the social responsibility to its customers, who looks to business to provide them with satisfying, safe products and respect their rights as customer.

As more and more people are aware of environmental problems which our human being are facing, most people nowadays do shopping with some degree of morality in mind, taking social or environmental issues into consideration as they select from a range of product or services. Therefore, the concept of

The corporate world has an unfavorable view of itself by being selfish, evil, and against the average American. Companies market themselves and their products in certain ways that makes them and their products appealing to everyone and if not everyone then a certain group of people. Every company has a mission to follow and values to go by, but some companies lack ethics and morals. In this paper I am going to talk about one company that engages in ethical behavior and another that doesn’t.

Sweatshops. The image the word provokes isn’t a pleasant one. A factory where people work long hours for only a small amount of money isn’t something we like to think about. The article published by The New York Times in 2009 entitled “Where Sweatshops Are a Dream” however, proposes a different view of these grueling working conditions. The article seeks to transform the view of most Americans from disgust to support for so called sweatshops. When the article was first published in 2009, the Obama administration was considering labor standards, something the author Nicholas Kristof believes is detrimental to undeveloped countries. As he argues, “Sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty… and banning them closes off one route out of

Sweatshop workers make the ultimate sacrifice for profit. Merchandise in the garment industry are outsourced and produced by slave labourers forced in working conditions that are cruel and exploitative, often in fear of punishment. "A "sweatshop" is defined by the US Department of Labor as a factory that violates two or more labor laws" (Do Something, 2016). Human trafficking in the garment industry is prevalent globally, but astronomical numbers are concentrated in developing countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam. Multimillion-dollar, globalized companies have no accountability and turn a blind eye to the exploitation towards trafficked victims occurring behind the scenes in fear of jeopardizing company reputations. This research

These conditions provide some power and control for these multinational corporations over their workers. The Chinese workers are powerless against the influence of the corporate executives. They are able to “ultimately set the pace of production as well as the wages of the workers” (“Working Conditions”). Sine corporations may deny any connection to these labor abuses in China. However, with these powers, these corporations cannot shy away from the fact that they did have some degree of responsibility for the conditions of Chinese workers.

What should Americans do about sweatshops? A question many of us ask ourselves on a daily basis. The goods made in sweatshops are cheap and easy to buy for American consumers but they come at a cost. Women and children work 17 hours a day in harsh working conditions where they are exposed to many hazards. The best thing the average American can do is boycott the companies using sweatshops.

However, today, the focus on stakeholder’s (apart from the shareholders, these are customers, suppliers and employees) expectations has also grown radically. Accordingly, ethical behaviours such as meeting stakeholders’ expectation objectives, environmental objectives and corporate social responsibility, which is accountability to the society and social responsibility, have resultantly become very important. Failure to comply with ethical behaviours can causes a business to damage its brand value and its reputation, which in turn could lead to reduced profits or even losses (Carroll and Buchholtz, 2014).

Ian 's central thesis, is a defence of the sweatshops in the poor countries in the third world, statinig that "A wage or labor practice is ethically acceptable if it is freely chosen by informed workers" (Carson,1). The global intercontinental coorporation 's sweatshops capture the requirements of the CLS and this way they are providing better options and opportunities to the workers in the third world

One of the leading companies that adopted CSR as a pioneer of ethic is The Body Shop. The company has used CSR as a competitive strategy in order to succeed in business. The shop owner knows what she does best. So, products are developed based on a specific group of customers in order to create a strong brand preferences and unique way with a perception of enormous customer groups, called sustainability ideals. The source of The Body Shop success is to utilize the benefits of CSR by selling products based on natural ingredients, paying a fair price and no testing on animal. According to porter (1985), he claimed that sustainability of differentiation depends on two things: "it is continued perceived value to buyers and the lack of competitor ability to imitate it" (Porter 1985 cited in Mallin 2009, p.71). It requires a transparency of work process with stakeholders. From this example, it explains why CSR is important to modern businesses like The Body Shop (Mallin 2009, pp.59-78),(Kwapong 2005, p.89).

Businesses have been relatively passive in investigate their in marketing ethics and are still operating according to traditional business models and process that do not reflect consumer interests and ethical implications of their activity often continue afterthought and are yet to be thoroughly incorporated into management decision-making. The contingency framework can accelerate this pre-emptive approach to ethical decision-making. To embed ethics into firms planning and strategy formulation process , marketers should learn from consumers ethical evaluation of their marketing techniques (Smith and Cooper-Martin 1997). An “ethical execution of the marketing program. In addition to financial , market, and competitive objectives, marketers should include consumer concerns and ethical integrity as important criteria for management decision making . Furthermore, ethics must be matched throughout the marketing planning process from product development, market selection , advertising and promotion execution.

In this study, Mohr and Webb attempted to determine weather or not a company’s social responsibility actions encourage consumers support and to what degree price affects such consumer’s purchase decisions. To answer these two questions, they conducted an experiment in which respondents were informed about corporate social responsibility and prices of goods that extending from low to high. Afterwards, buying intent was calculated with survey that questioned whether or not respondents would pay for various products at different prices from different corporations. By examining corporate social responsibility as an independent variables and purchase intention as the dependent variable, researchers inferred that businesses’ ethical action do prompt customers to purchase their products. Yet, prices also affected consumer behavior; the effects of it were stronger when corporations’ ethical actions were low and/or non-existent. This study not only used psychology to accurately code the surveys and categorize consumers’ conduct patterns, but also incorporated the discipline of economics to attach a theoretical price on consumer goods. This article answers in part my own research and will

Every organisation has an obligation to act to benefit the society at large in an ethical framework. This helps in maintaining and developing the organisations image and consequently influences the customers’ overall evaluation

Stakeholder-orientated framework, analyzing ethical problems on the basis of whom they affect: consumers, competitors, society as a whole •