3-1.2: What Price Safety?

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From the course by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Global Impact: Business Ethics

21 ratings

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Global Impact: Business Ethics

21 ratings

Course 6 of 7 in the Specialization Global Challenges in Business

Global business ethics is the study and analysis of how ethics and global business are connected. How we should treat each other and our organizations in global and local contexts is the topic of this course. Business ethics and corporate responsibility are inherent in global commerce. Commerce is about markets, and markets entail exchanges between people and groups of people. So commerce is about human relationships, and indeed, it could not be otherwise. One of the important challenges in global business is working out the extent of these obligations in the interrelationships between businesses and the particular local cultures in which that business operates. The ethical issues arising from these engagements, the kinds of values-based considerations out of which an organization negotiates with local concerns, and how an organization can be both an enabler of economic value-added while respecting cultural differences will be topics of this course. Upon successful completion of this course you will be able to: • Become morally sensitive to ethical dilemmas in global commerce • Identify ethical issues in global business • Master stakeholder analysis • Address issues from more than one point of view • Use a well-reasoned process by which to arrive at ethically-defensible decisions • Evaluate good and weak arguments • Defend your conclusions This course is part of the iMBA offered by the University of Illinois, a flexible, fully-accredited online MBA at an incredibly competitive price. For more information, please see the Resource page in this course and onlinemba.illinois.edu.

From the lesson

Module 3: In Rome should we do as the Romans do?

Be able to distinguish egoism, role relativism, cultural relativism, ethical relativism and some forms of universalism. Apply these distinctions to the “Greed is Good” speech on the attached video. Apply these distinctions using the framework introduced in Module 1.

3-1.1: Resolving the Bayer CropScience Dilemma4:10

3-1.2: What Price Safety?4:47

3-1.3a: The Issue(s) of Relativism Part. 17:02

3-1.3b: The Issue(s) of Relativism Part. 210:19

3-1.4: A Social Contracts Approach to Relativism in Global Commerce5:50

3-1.5: A Social Contract's Approach to Relativism in Global Commerce Review2:09

Meet the Instructors

Patricia Werhane
Visiting Professor
Department of Business Administration

Suppose you're the manager of a small division of a large

multi-national company operating in a remote area of the world.

What do you do when the ethics of the organization clash with the ethics in

the country?

[MUSIC]

We're going to start with the case called, what price safety?

What Price Safety is a real story

about a company that Motorola was running in a very disguised

location because they don't want us to know the name of the place called Nambu.

Nambu manufactures microelectronics and Motorola owns the controlling interest.

If the plant they have in Anzen focuses on safety and

that's very important at Motorola.

Nambu, interestingly, has a sort of a custom,

I would say, of duty and obedience to authority.

And Motorola has a worldwide code of ethics

that applies to all their companies.

That code includes, which seems pretty obvious, respect for each employee,

safety first, and third, and this is important in this case,

employees will not physically assault or touch other employees.

Now, what is this case about?

First off it's about Stan Stark who's an American and

he is running the headquarters.

Willard Wa is a Nambuian, he works on employee relationships.

Henk Van Dyke is a Dutch Human Resources person at that plant.

Victor Min is the plant manager and he's been doing very well.

And Tommy Tang is an employee, a plant worker, at the plant.

Notice the diversity of these people.

This is quite a diverse company and a diverse group of stakeholders.

The other stakeholders at the Anzen plant are of course, Motorola headquarters,

Motorola shareholders, the plant itself and the country Nambu.

Now, the question we want to think about is how should we prior our ties

each one of these stakeholders or group of stakeholders in this case, and

that will turn out to be important as we'll see.

So what is the problem here?

Victor broke one of the rules at Motorola.

Never to physically assault another employee.

This is a dismissible offense and

ordinarily Victor would be fired immediately.

So Victor and Tommy are bad role models in this factory.

But, there's a little catch here, because in Nambu, if you apologize to someone and

give them some payment, that is considered apology and the issue is over.

It's finished.

So how would dismissing Victor and

Tommy be viewed by the Nambuian culture and the Nambuian employees?

Probably little questioning.

Anzen has a spotless safety record and

Victor was very proud of that and wanted to preserve that.

But Tommy was kind of an independent worker.

He'd been a mountain guide and he sort of thought for himself.

Unlike other people in Nambu, he didn't understand duty and

obedience to authority.

Now, at this plant safety glasses were required,

because part of the plant floor was rather dangerous.

Tommy hated safety glasses and simply wouldn't wear them.

And Tommy was warned, I don't know how many times,

please wear your safety glasses, you know that's the rule.

Finally, Victor got really fed up with Tommy and lost his temper and

slapped him around his ears.

Now this is the first time Victor had ever lost his temper.

He was a terrific manager otherwise.

And, of course, Tommy,

who's now feeling really badly about not wearing the glasses, apologizes.

And then Victor apologizes to Tommy for hitting him and

he presents him a lot of money as part of the compensation for hurting his ears.

So Victor and Tommy are reconciled, but Tommy has lost part of his hearing.

But this is the dilemma here, to fire Victor or Tommy would be

terribly expensive under Nambuian law, and it would also violate their culture.

So what should Stan, the head of this company do?

When there these deep cultural differences, how does one decide?

Which shareholder interest take priority?

[MUSIC]

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