Ventria Bioscience Case Study

800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to www.hbsp.harvard.edu/educators. This publication may

Do you know what GMO’S are? You should because more than likely you consume them every day. Malnutrition of the rapidly growing human population is one of the major problem faced by the world we live in today. Genetically modified food (GM Food) is the solution to this problem. The food produced on a massive scale, by direct or indirect involvement of genetically manipulated organisms is called genetically modified food.

Lawrence, Anne (2010). Business and Society: Stakeholders, Ethics, Public Policy. 13th Edition. McGraw-Hill Learning Solutions, 2010. VitalBook file. Bookshelf.

In this essay we are taking a look at the famous Milton Friedman's essay "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Profit ". The following paper is an attempt to critically evaluate the article in consideration of Freeman Stakeholder Theory.

Problems/Harms: Serious health risks of genetically modified foods are ignored in order to benefit greedy billion dollar corporations.

Ventria believed that the plant-made medicines promise affordable human health products for the global community and wanted to revolutionize the biopharmaceutical industry by putting production on a large scale.

Many believe that business entities should have an ethical duty to be socially responsible, to work towards increasing its positive effects on society while decreasing its negative effects. Many organizations look for opportunities to be socially responsible while also creating shareholder wealth.

The expectation that businesses behave responsibly and positively contribute to society all while pursuing their economic goals is one that holds firm through all generations. Stakeholders, both market and nonmarket, expect businesses to be socially responsible. Many companies have responded to this by including this growing expectation as part of their overall business operations. There are companies in existence today whose sole purpose is to socially benefit society alongside businesses who simply combine social benefits with their economic goals as their company mission. These changes in societal expectations and thus company purpose we’ve seen in the business community over time often blurs the line of what it means to be socially

In this paper I am writing on the Ventria Bioscience and the Controversy over Plant-Made Medicines Case. Ventria Bioscience is a company that is trying to commercialize pharmaceuticals made from genetically modified plants. While Ventria is gaining opposition from regulators, activist, and environmentalist; they could succeed if they use their relevant stakeholders and specific strategies, information, financial incentive, constituency building, to influence regulators.

Corporations can be large or small but they all have some sort of ethical impact on their employees, shareholders, customers, community, and surrounding environments. Richard DeGeorge writes, “We can speak of corporations having moral responsibilities to act in certain ways, and they are morally responsible for the consequences of their actions on people.” (p. 200). Large corporations are comprised of the board of directors, management, and their workers. They also deal with suppliers, customers, and have competitors. This essay will examine the moral responsibilities within a corporation.

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).

Just Business: Christian Ethics for the Marketplace. By Alexander Hill. IVP Academic; Revised edition (January 10, 2008), 276pp., $11.29 Paper. Chanel Mahone

Consequently, the model of stakeholder by Edward Freeman has broadly considered as the strongest theory regarding responsibilities of a company towards society where the company is located (Freeman 2008 pp. 162-165).

Welcome to the age of an agricultural revolution as everyday biotechnology continues to bring innovation to human’s most basic needs – food. Food is essential to any living organism, providing energy for our production and nutrients for our protection. Without this fundamental element, life cannot exist. Our lack to produce our own energy, like plants, causes us to become dependent on others for survival. Humans existence is attributed only to the million years of evolution our food source underwent to sustain our survival. Changing the primary nature of our food source, whether it is plant or animal, directs mankind in a dangerous future if our food dependency is permanently hampered. Welcome to the age of an agricultural devolution

Morality and values are contingent on the community’s view and opinions of the issues at hand. As time passes, the community will evolve and the popular interpretation of an issue will influence the acceptance of behavior by the community at large and, in a business setting, it is no different. Business leaders must adhere to accepted cultural and community code of conduct in order be accepted as contributing members of the community. In analyzing the role of business ethics within a community, Joseph Betz (1998) wrote: