Business Ethic Research Assignment: Nike on Child Labor

Nike on Child Labor
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Introduction
Child slavery is one of the oldest practices and can be traced throughout the human history. Ideally the practice has been tied to children working as servants and apprentices. However, during the industrial revolution, the practice reached new heights, with most of the entities taking the form of slavery (Child Labor Education Project, 2016). Most of the practices during this era involved children working for long hours and in the most dangerous conditions. One of the main aspect that led to the use of the children was their size. Ideally the children had the ability to move around within small spaces, especially in operations such as mining (HISTORY.com, 2016). But the most important part was the fact that, they were easier to manipulate and could be paid much less for more work. It was not until the great depression that the market opinions changed. Most of the people now wanted the jobs to go to the adults. However, there have been some incidences in the recent past that have been a highlight of the child labor ethical violations (Micheletti, Føllesdal, Stolle & International Seminar on Political Consumerism, 2004). There is an estimated 211 million children under the age 15 whose rights are being violated across the globe. This is relative to the fact that, child labor is global problem that. It is further estimated that, there are more than 2.5 million children working in the developed economies (Srivastava, 2012). Most of the developed economies have also been involved in this trade, where they startup companies in the developing nations and take advantage of the child labor economies to their advantage to boost their economies of scale. Nike is an American footwear manufacturing company, that has been involved a in a child labor scandal. The company was involved in a scandal that can be traced back to the 1970s (Srivastava, 2012). The company was involved in quite a number incidences that spread from South Korea, Taiwan and China. In the earlier years, most of the economies were developing and so most of the people moved up to the higher paying jobs and thus most of the less paying jobs were left to the children. Nike took advantage of these practice to make billions of dollars of children. Business ethics is a crucial part of conducting business, by ensuring that the business practices are not exploitative. This paper looks at the various ways that Nike as a global company played a role in the child labor economy (Edmonds & Pavcnik, 2005). These are addressed relative to the legal and ethical business practices along with research findings evaluation on the case study.
Thesis Statement: By using the underage children in the production lines, regardless of franchise arrangements, Nike violated the children rights and business ethical practices.
Identification and discussion of ethical, legal and industry related business issues at controversy in the case at hand.
Poor working conditions have been a common practice in the business practices, where workers are exploited through long hours and poor pay. This is a common practice especially in the developing countries where the legal framework is not as strict. Developi...