Business Ethics to Ensure Productivity, Rights, and Profitability

Business ethics
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Introduction
In businesses, a lot goes into ensuring a successful launch of products and making significant profits. For most consumers, this is never a concern so long as you get the final product. Business ethics defines the policies and practices that a business should observe to promote integrity, human dignity and gain the trust of consumers and investors. When it comes to ethical practices in foreign countries, several concerns arise, which this essay will discuss. These include if a business should push for labor rights, a minimum pay, and unionization in developing nations it has operations? What rights a western company has over its foreign contractor to observe protocols necessary in the west. The ethical responsibilities of individual consumers towards companies utilizing oversees labor and whether businesses should implement universal workplace standards about working environment and protection of employees.
Should a company push for employment rights in developing countries where it is operating?
Yes, a corporation should push for labor laws in the third-world countries they are operating in out of moral obligation. The available labor standards such as protections from forced labor, low wages, working in unsafe environments, and having the freedom to join a union are fundamental in upholding human rights (Burtless, 2001, pp. 10). Thus, in exchange for access to the largest market countries, companies operating in countries such as the US, where labor standards are highly regarded, have an ethical mandate to expand the domain of human rights to all countries in the world.
Besides achieving success, a hallmark of any business organization is ensuring they observe honesty, integrity, and objectivity when doing business. Complying with the local and national regulations is paramount so is following international laws. Moreover, ethical conscience mandates companies to not only settle for the bare minimum in the guise of good faith (Byars, & Stanberry, 2018). Instead, they should take the organizational responsibility to try and bring about substantial change that insulates them from criticism and scandals that come with exploiting developing countries for profits. For instance, the chocolate scandal rocked the chocolate industry for paying cocoa farmers less than one dollar a day and using child laborers.
A company should advocate for employees’ labor rights in developing countries to achieve equality. The performance of a business is a reflection of its beliefs founded on its religious beliefs, education, communities, and families. According to Maria Artuso and Carolan McLarney (2015, pp. 2-3), developing countries likely have substandard working environments and merge wages. Hence, many international companies are ready to take advantage of these conditions to lower their production cost. Also, they enjoy an unfair advantage in the global market. Nevertheless, if a company pushes for the observance of international labor standards in all trade deals, the developing countries get to enjoy optimal protection like first-world countries. These standards will also level the playing field for all in...