Ethics 4.4.2 Flashcards
What is a stakeholder?
Is any individual or group with an interest in the actions and decision-making of the business
What are the 2 types of stakeholders?
Internal
External
What is an example of an internal stakeholder?
- Employees
- Managers
- Owners
- Shareholders
What is an example of an external stakeholder?
- Customers
- Suppliers
- Shareholders
- Government
- Local community
- Society
- Creditors
What does corporate social responsibility mean?
Corporate Social Responsibility is a management concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns into their business operations and interactions with their stakeholders.
What are examples of conflicts between stakeholders?
- Cut jobs and reduce costs
- Add extra shifts to increase factory capacity
- Introduce new machinery to replace manual work
- Increase selling prices significantly to improve profit margins
What are the ethical issues that a business must take into consideration?
- Pay and working conditions
- Emissions
- Waste disposal
- Exploitation of labour
- Child labour
- Misleading product labelling
- Inappropriate promotional activites
What are the features of pay and working conditions?
- Before deciding on the morality of pay rates around the world, it is imperative to view local pay rates in a local context.
- Paying a factory worker the same In Vietnam as a factory worker in the UK fails to take into account differences in the costs of living.
What are the features of emissions?
- Ethical issues arise when considering who measures emissions, although independent testing takes place if the manufacturer itself has to pay an independent tester, the company doing the testing may be tempted to adjust results in the hope of securing a long-term customer.
- A further issue can be seen if a company discovers an emissions problem with a product, failure to communicate this information externally, perhaps in the hope of fixing it quickly without tarnishing the company’s brand image, is unethical.
What are the features of waste disposal?
- Many products produced by businesses pose problems of disposal when their life is complete, getting rid of old consumer electronics products which often contain poisonous elements presents problems with an ethical dimension.
- In developed countries, disposal of hazardous substances is highly regulated and expensive, however, some businesses see less economically developed countries with their weaker or non-existent regulations as a cheap solution.
- Dumping hazardous products in less developed countries is unethical.
What are the features of the exploitation of labour?
Taking advantage of workers’ economic or social conditions to acquire their labour at a low cost.
What are the features of child labour?
The employment of children to do adult jobs
What are the features of misleading product labelling?
Many ethical issues revolve around labelling, and many of these relate to food products, issues include:
- Implications of messages about the vague benefits of a product.
- Inferences about a product’s ingredients or methods of production (e.g. implying its all-natural without being clear about the level of processed ingredients used in it).
- Unhelpful imagery on packaging/in adverts, which is designed to infer or suggest something untrue without explicitly claiming an untruth.
What are the features of inappropriate promotional activities?
- Promotions that encourage consumers to buy more than they need - can lead to food waste.
- Food retailers have also received criticism for running ‘Buy one get one free’ promotions on sugary drinks and foods, encouraging over-consumption of foods best consumed in small quantities.
- Advertising has also been blamed for social issues, e.g., body image issues, especially among teens, by using edited images of models to create unattainable beauty goals.
- Companies offering credit to try to encourage people to buy products they can’t afford.
