Unethical Business Practices: A Case Study

1.0 Introduction Business ethics refers to what is right and wrong, good and bad, harmful and beneficial regarding decisions and actions in organizational transactions (Weiss, 2009).

So how to identify the unethical business practices? It is very easily. For example, which are company use child labor, produce tainted products, false advertising, infringement, polluted environment and etc.

A company must make a competitive return for its shareholders and treat its employees fairly. A company also has wider responsibilities. It should minimize any harm to the environment and work in ways that do not damage the communities in which it operates. This is known as corporate social responsibility, CSR (Businesscasestudies.co.uk, 2015).

The coursework

However, to boost the apparent amount of protein and to fool food-quality inspectors, melamine was added to watered-down raw milk supplies by some milk dealers to pursue profits at the expense of other people's health. The tainted milk was then sold to Sanlu and other dairy companies. The Sanlu Group was criticized for selling substandard products and trying to cover up the tainted milk issue. Six babies died and more than 300,000 had kidney stones and renal failure from consuming the tainted infant formula (George and Pratt,

It also cause the phenomenon of karoshi and suicide. However, exhausted employees who must work in oppressive and dangerous work environments may see suicide as a viable option. Foxconn stated that it had recently built modern dormitories, had improved the food at the dorms, and had included recreational facilities such as swimming pools to improve the standard of living of the employees. Critics say that recreational facilities are of no value if the employees do not have time to use them. For example, one worker stated that they are extremely tired and under continuous pressure and are required to complete each step in 7 seconds, which is faster than the machines. Less than a week later, another Foxconn employee committed suicide by jumping to his death (Stanwick and Stanwick,