沃尔玛血汗工厂涉及的商业道德层面分析

ETHICS AND WALMART CLOTHING SWEATSHOPIntroductionWith the development of economy, many large number of multinational companies establish their sweatshop in developing countries resulting in many unhuman consequences. Take Walmart as an example, the Rona building collapse killed 1130 workers with low salary and long working hours. This essay outlines the whole accident occurred and demonstrate literature review from human rights, political role of companies and sustainable supply chain aspects. Finally, recommendations of various stakeholders can be seen to improve the ethical condition in multinational corporations business environment, which is the main purpose of the essay. That is, cheap labors are able to get their access to their legal and basic ethical human rights while working for clothing industry and other areas.BackgroundCase: Walmart and Rana plaza collapse in Bangladesh1.General introduction of Walmart.Walmart stores, as an US biggest retailor company in the world, aims to provide goods at low prices to its customers. Due to minimizing the cost of manufacturing, supplies of Walmart are located mostly in developing countries with cheap labors (The Economist,2013)2.E mployee’s working condition in Bangladesh.Salaries of workers are highly low in Bangladesh. Month wages of clothing employees range fron 70 to 100 dollars which is just one fifth of workers’ salaries in China and many children as works in the damp little dark room doing embroidery or dyeing.3.The Rona plaza collapse.At 24,April 2013 , an 8-story commercial building named Rona plaza which is located several miles away from Bangladesh capital collapsed with death of 1130 garment workers for Walmart clothing industry and 2500 injured(Huffington Post,2014). It is noticed later that cracks of the building was found and all the staff of plaza was evaluated immediately including employees of a bank and shops. However, garment works was ordered to go back to keep working by the building owner ignoring the danger of cracks with a threat of losing salary of one month the second day when the deadliest garment-factory accident happened.Besides, brands like Nike, H&M, Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Disney, Sears, Joe Fresh as well as Liz Claibourne are all reported to own their textile sweatshops like Walmart mainly in south-east Asia and southern and central part of the US during recent years.Literature reviewHuman rights.Corporations of global influence develop economy worldwide in a great deal. However, it can be seen clearly that many social challenges occur due to corporations such as human right violations and environment pollution. modern society, corporations are expected and required to address these issues through following government laws and regulations and social ethical morals to ensure labors with safe working conditions, fair wage and ethical treatment). Specifically, literature theories include social contract theory, social justice theory, stakeholder theory, deontological theory and market theory by professional researchers (Wilson,2005).Social contract theory.Wilson(2005) states that corporations agree to enter a contract with various stakeholders to exchange natural resources products with ethical mutual benefit. However, in fact, irreversible natural pollution, unhuman sweatshops, wildlife extinction and so forth are obvious proof of the break of previous aggrement. Walmart employed children labor breaking local labor laws, providing unsafe working conditions like a Rana building with crackers and paying less wage.Social justice theory.Social justice theory offer protection for the weaker stakeholders such as workers in sweatshops in developing countries who is highly possible to be treated as slaves by their bosses to in actual markets to create efficiency gains.Theory of rights.Theory of rights reflects multinational corporations today does have rights such as property rights. Friedman (1970) also states that business aims to maximize its profitslegally. However, the theory states that reasonable rights of stakeholders like customers and employees are not supposed to be undermined or sacrificed by such rights or be deprived by owners to gain profit (Wilson, 2005). Owners of business should not be as an instrumental stakeholder theorist. In the scenario, Walmart sacrifices safety of almost 3000 working employees to satisfy owners’ economic profit with utilitarianism managerial mindset.Deontological theory.The major point of deontological theory is that managers of corporations are morally obligated to treat its employees equally and provide welfare such as safety protections and transportation convenience to satisfy various needs which is the content of normative stakeholder theory. Specifically, clothing workings evaluated from plaza because of crackers have a say to refuse to go back to work instead of being at risk of losing wages(Lozano and Pandi,2005).Market theory.From the economic point of view, actual markets motivate buyers and sellers to operate together with a result of lowering costs (Scalet 2014). The history of commerce is a history of remarkable innovations to lower transaction costs.A market wage is still a good choice than unemployment (Friedrich Hayek,1978). Walmart as an American company is one part in capitalism market in which government have less power to control compared with communism such as China. Government of Bangladesh have less power of economy market control which could not protect workers of its own country. Meanwhile, even the pay could not cover normal living expenses, it is still the best choice of the poor and unemployment.1.Political role of corporationsIt can be concluded that there is no agreed meaning for corporations’ political responsibilities (Fooks et al, 2013). To be more specific, Walmart as a multinational company has grown into an extremely powerful corporation based on its sheer size and wealth which result in amplifying its influence in ethier political area or social sphere. In contract, power of government seems to be diminished and non-government organization becomes more active at the same time. However, corporate social responsibility to various stakeholders has increasingly become a heated issue in nowadays (Garriga and Melle,2004). Research on corporations’ political power postulates a narrow normative theory, in contract with the other string of theories which are more descriptive in nature .2.Sustainable supply chainAs we all know, companies operate in a highly competitive market environment where cost reduction in supply chain operations is the key basement of gaining large profit espescially compared with commercial brands (Carbone et al,2012). Therefore, developing countries with weak legal framework and cheaper labor is an appropriate option.From doing research ethical theories on supply chain clearly focus on issues such as environmental pollution and sustainability which pay less attention to social benefits (Friedman.1970).Recommendations1 Bangladesh government practicesBase on the social justice theory, all government policy should aim to build a sustainable legal framework. It is discovered that some illegal sweatshops of clothing industry are ignored by government officers. Besides, government should establish newpolitical strategy to gain more power to involving the market operation to let it better off in certain circumstances. Furthermore, Bangladesh should build social welfare for poor and unemployed people to give them a choice to not to be servant of certain unethical clothing industry.2 supplier practicesWalmart should invest essential fund to employ qualified safeguards to educate workers with professional training and monitor supplier activities in order to meet both globally accepted standards and local regulations (Huffington Post, 2014). It can also collaborate with the local government to carry out injury benefit project and share risks with all business owners. Moreover, Bangladesh’s solution is an example to other developing as it will alert all developing countries about what might happened in global business (Cruz, 2013).3 Cooperation among stakeholdersGovernment, multinational companies such as Walmart, non-government organizations and other potential stakeholders can work together to tackle Bangladesh’s clothing industry. Non-government organizations should quit their autonomy and operate with profit-making companies to be powerful enough in order to enact laws and monitoring each other. Stakeholder theory focus mainly on addressing problems of the ethics of capitalism and managerial mindset. (Houngbo, 2014)).ConclusionTo conclude, based on the sweatshop of Walmart and the Rona building collapse accident, findings extracted from literature includes human rights, corporations’ political role and sustainable supply chain. To prevent the phenomenon occurring second time,several recommended behaviors of supply chain, government, non-government organizations and multinational corporations should cooperate and monitor all together to boost business in an ethical sustainable way.ReferenceHayek, F. A. (1978). The atavism of social justice. New studies in philosophy, politics, economics and the history of ideas, 5768.Friedman, A. (1970). Foundations of modern analysis. 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