Free Ethics And Corporate Responsibility In The Workplace And The World Essay Sample

Stakeholder characteristics

Stakeholder can be explained to organizations, groups and individuals that needs to be considered by front- line personnel, supervisors and leaders. Stakeholders are those individuals or groups who has the power to impact the attainment of the goals of an organization. It is very important for organizations to conduct a stakeholder analysis as this helps firms to identify individuals, groups and firms that may impact either positively or negatively the achievement of goals.
Some of the significant characteristics of stakeholders are that they are driven by involvement and interest in a particular activity conducted by a firm and they impact the organizational objectives and future growth prospects of a firm. Depending on the level of significance of stakeholders, a company needs to classify them as primary and secondary. Primary stakeholders are of critical significance to a firm as their interest and involvement is critical to the success of a project.
Most organizations consider the end users and customers to be the primary stakeholder. However, secondary stakeholder also is equally important for a firm’s success. Secondary stakeholders consists of employees and they are the driving force for completion and successful achievement of company objectives. Hence, it is essential for firms to consider the possible interest of secondary stakeholders so as to excellently achieve goals. Often the position shared by individuals in a firm helps them in positively or negatively impacting decision making and hence companies should critically consider the views and opinions of such stakeholders.
PharmaCare has several stakeholders and they may considerably impact the company’s goal achievement and future growth. Relevant stakeholders of PharmaCare are the employees, government agencies and non-profit making bodies, medical practitioners and hospitals, the medical community in general and the management body of PharmaCare. The current scenario is a depiction of a company that has engaged in unethical work practices in order to garner high volume of sales and revenue.

Human rights issues presented in PharmaCare’s treatment of Colberia

Pharmaceutical companies need to use several natural products so as to develop medicines and drugs. During such research and collection of samples to develop drugs the indigenous communities may be compromised of their basic human rights. Moreover, there are conflicting ethical standards and guidelines that further complicates the treatment of indigenous groups. The current treatment of the indigenous community in Colberia by executives of PharmaCare is an example of unethical treatment of the indigenous group.
Guidelines on labor maintains that organizations should treat employees with respect and provide them basic human rights. Standards of employment maintains that company executives and supervisors should treat every employee within set human rights guidelines (Nettheim, 2009). There is heightened debate on the safeguarding of global intellectual property including the protection of the indigenous communities and indigenous knowledge. In this case, the indigenous community is being exploited and at the same time the ecology in Colberia has been hampered.
The above case study mentions the manner in which the indigenous community is exploited. This is despite the fact that there is a draft declaration by the United Nations striving to safeguard the human rights of the indigenous population. However, this often comes in conflict with the protection of human rights of indigenous community and the protection of the environment as pharmaceutical companies gather natural samples for research and development.
PharmaCare should ensure that the indigenous community in Colberia is not discriminated and they are paid as per labor laws. The remuneration of USD 1/- for gathering samples of plants for research is below the standards of international labor. Another recommendation is that freely gathering information from expert indigenous healers on indigenous cure of ailments is an unethical practice. PharmaCare executives should provide them remuneration for their expert advice and guidance on indigenous treatment and development of drugs. Last, the indigenous community should be benefitted and proper living conditions should be provided to them.

PharmaCare’s environmental activities and anti-environmental lobbying efforts

PharmaCare is one of the leading U.S. based pharmaceutical companies and has recently launched an initiative to protect the environment by embracing certain green initiatives, including changes in packaging and recycling. At the same time, the firm is engaged in anti – environmental lobbying in order to safeguard its environmental unfriendly and unethical activities in Colberia, Africa.
Most organizations engage in corporate social responsibility acts wherever they find that their own interests are not hampered. However, such practices are often superficial and in most cases firms do not compromise on their revenue and turnover to safeguard the environment. The case of PharmaCare launching the We Care About Your World initiative and anti – environmentalism in Colberia is a spectacular case of failure in corporate social responsibility and ethics.
The We Care About Your World initiative may be an example of reluctant corporate social responsibility practice (Reinhardt & Stavins, 2010). Most firms are engaging in CSR activity simply to please and garner higher corporate and brand reputation. Most supervisors uphold the interest of the firm and the environment in order to achieve their own personal interest and this leads to violation of ethics and corporate social responsibility practices. Furthermore several underlying challenges may it difficult to make certain inferences about corporate social responsibility practices. Taking advantage of this blurred line between corporate social responsibility act and environmental protection, firms often engage in acts that may be detrimental for the environment.
At the same time, certain acts to depict a positive image infuses firms to engage in green initiate as a corporate social responsibility act. PharmaCare is hence engaging in corporate social responsible initiatives in those areas that are not in conflict with the revenues of the firm. However, areas that conflict with unfriendly environmental practices and firm revenue are totally being ignored as this is a purely profit making venture and holds the organization’s revenue to be more important than engaging in social welfare acts.

PharmaCare and ethics

The utilitarian and deontology views on ethics stress on ethical action of an individual. However, there are several ethical dilemmas in these theories. The utilitarian theory presents itself an ethical dilemma by not considering justice. Sometimes, certain activities may be unjust but would lead to societal benefits and this theory does not consider these actions to be ethical. In the above case, PharmaCare executives are destroying the ecology and natural habitat for their quest to develop drugs and pharmaceutical compounds. This is a violation of utilitarian ethics.
The deontological view on ethics emphasizes on duty and proposes several ethical rules and guidelines that binds an individual to perform certain duties. Hence, according to this view, individuals are striving to do social good, on one hand, by developing drugs and new cures. But, the dilemma in this case is that executives are not bothered about protecting the environment and the society in general. Hence, deontological ethics is presenting conflicting ethical views for this instance.
The virtue theory of ethics is concerned with the development of excellent character attributes like generosity and kindness that individuals develop. In the case of PharmaCare the executives have clearly violated considerations of virtue ethics by meting out ill-treatment towards the indigenous community so as to achieve their own personal interests.
The ethics of care focuses on preventing harm by attending to societal needs and providing care. This view itself is conflicting as by striving to derive societal needs to develop new drugs and cure, PharmaCare is harming the ecology and the natural habitat in Colberia. At the same time, the ethics of care is again violated as PharmaCare executives are infringing upon the human rights of the indigenous communities by denying them their basic rights.
According to me, PharmaCare has engaged in unethical practices by ill-treating the indigenous population. Indigenous population are being exploited and due to globalization are experiencing great changes in their basic and cultures and values. Hence, it is necessary to protect the indigenous population by safeguarding their human rights. At the same time, it is necessary for the firm to protect the ecology and this may be accomplished by taking samples of plants and cultivating them elsewhere. In this manner, the firm will engage in environmental friendly activities.

Ethical violations by Coca Cola

Coca Cola is a multinational giant that has undertaken several corporate social responsibility acts. It commenced business operations in the year 1886 by locally producing soda and selling it in Atlanta. The company started global expansion by the year 1920 and the end of the twentieth century witnessed Coca Cola product across the globe.
The year 2007 witnessed the launch of corporate social responsibility activities by the formulation of its sustainability model, Live Positively. However, the year 2003 witnessed several demonstrations and campaigns following the publication of an adverse report by an Indian NGO. The report accused this company for engaging in unethical acts by harming society and ecology.
One of the allegations made against this firm is the usage of unacceptable pesticide levels in its products, extraction of groundwater in greater amounts and the pollution of water bodies. The Indian government was asked to legally implement water standards by the Indian NGO, Centre for Science and Environment. This led the company to face financial losses and its corporate reputation was harmed due to negative media and publicity reports (Torres et al. 2012).
PharmaCare resorted to both environmental and human rights violations and Coca Cola harmed the greater society including its loyal customers by selling them pesticide contaminated products. Both are instances of ethical and corporate social responsibility infringement. The greater good of the society and customers have not been considered by both firms.
The main motive considered by both Coca Cola and PharmaCare is purely to garner revenue and to uphold societal welfare for organizational interests. Furthermore, Coca Cola denied reports of the allegation and this led to harming its corporate reputation and suffer severe losses. The firm also faced CSR conflicts in other countries by quickly recovered by its anti-environmental lobbying policies. PharmaCare is also engaged in anti-environmental lobbying as it wishes to continue with its unethical practices in Colberia.
Most organizations believe that ethics and CSR practices should be conduct as long as the firm can gain benefits. However, in case of ethical and CSR conflicts, firms prefer to go ahead with lobbying so as to continue reaping benefits by following immoral practices. The main problem is that ethical and CSR guidelines differ on the basis of the nation and location and hence firms take advantage of such loopholes to engage in unethical practices to reap benefits.

References:

Nettheim, G. (2009). Human rights and indigenous peoples. Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Journal, 1(2), 129 – 141.
Reinhardt, F.L. & Stavins, R.N. (2010). Corporate social responsibility, business strategy, and the environment. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 26(2), 164 – 181.
Torres, C.A.C., Garcia-French, M., Hordjik, R. & Lana Olup, K.N. (2012). Four Case Studies on Corporate Social Responsibility: Do Conflicts Affect a Company’s Corporate Social Responsibility Policy? Utretch Law Review, 8(3), 51 – 73.
.