When you think about ethics in general setting ethics is a term we use to our concern for good behavior. Business ethics is basically the same as your normal day ethics. It involves being conscious of what you are doing, including what consequences may come with the action that you are taking. When working for an organization, you need to comply with general rules, such as laws, customs and honor yourself to the policies of the organization. As a manager, you may be faced with certain situations where you may need to choose between the organization or your fellow employees. In any situation, an unethical choice by the manager’s part may affect its relationship with his peers and a good work relationship.
As an organization, you have numerous responsibilities many of which needs to be ethical, but concerning the closing of the MM Brands Bakersfield plants this is something that throughout the years has become somewhat of a normality where companies that do business abroad, and are also competing with competitors to see who has better quality, but can also give it to the customer the cheapest. Due to this competition companies have needed to find a new way to give their customers the best quality and the cheapest price, this has led to companies to outsource elsewhere such as China because the labor cost is cheaper people would work longer hours for less pay. In the business world situation such as these are very common where a company needs to close and relocate themselves somewhere else, and workers usually get layoffs. In this case, it was promised to the workers from the senior manager that he would do anything possible and fight for their jobs, but when push came to shove the senior manager acted in unethically. Because when the senior manager had the opportunity to fight for his fellow employees’ compensation, he didn’t do anything about this, but instead he looked out for himself and took the job in China instead. In this specific scenario where the job was offered to the Senior Manager you can’t blame him for taking the job, but we can accuse him of acting unethically as he promised to fight for the employee’s compensation. In this case the Manager shouldn’t have promised anything to the workers if when he had the opportunity he didn’t act upon his promise. We cannot also forget to pin point that it wasn’t only the Manager who acted unethically, but also the organization as a whole. The reason the organization is also at fault here is because that they have just forgotten about the workers who probably been there helping the company for years. Basically, what the organization have told its employees by their actions is we are closing down because you guys are too expensive to maintain we are going to go somewhere where it cheaper and more convenient for us and you guys as workers find a way to make it work.
The Utilitarian Theory of Moral Ethics, states “all of the good and bad produced by the act, whether arising after the act has been performed or during its performance.” This method can be applied to the decision makers also for the people that are impacted by the decision. The way that the organization and the company acted was the complete opposite of Utilitarianism, they acted with such arrogance. They took a decision that was beneficial to just them without thinking of the workers who are going to be affected by this decision. According to the Utilitarian Theory this was ethically incorrect because not everyone benefited from the decision that was taken. The reason its ethically incorrect is that it only stimulated happiness throughout a selected group of people within the organization such as MM Brand and the senior managers, as well as the one-third of workers who ended up finding better jobs with higher wagers. But two – thirds of the workers ended up not improving their quality of life. One-third of the workers ended up in similar work environment with the same requirements as their previous one, and the final third ended up jobless.
The Kantian Theory of Morality is a concept that everyone is worth something and their pride must be respected. What this means for the Kantian theory is that you need to respect each other’s dignity, this gives people the opportunity to choose freely. In regard to the case the organization MM brand was exploiting the Bakersfield Plant as well as the workers. They exploited them with low wages, and a low skill job. As soon as things weren’t going to plan and there was nothing more to exploit, they moved somewhere else which was more convenient to them, which ultimately benefited the organization. What the MM Brand did in this case goes completely against what the Kantian Theory is.
The Nietzschean Theory of Moral Philosophy is a philosophy that basically says that nothing in nature has value. This philosophy is rather curious because it is saying that we humans are bound to see things as good and bad, but these things we consider seeing are neither both. By combining Nietzschean philosophy with the case the company deem that the way they are handling things are ethically correct, by moving somewhere else. Whereas the workers that didn’t get any gain from the movement of the organization feel like the way the situation was handled was ethically incorrect.
Pragmatic Theory, this theory is basically constructed upon a specific set of principles such as; policies, workability, and suggestions are the standards of their quality. What the Pragmatic Theory is, basically that ideas are fundamentals for a plan of action. This means that ideas and plans are practical if successful. In regard to the case the decision that was taken by the MM Brand can be deemed as success for the organization and the senior manager, but it can also be seen as a success two the two – thirds of the employees who ended up getting a better job.
The circumstances in this case can be evaluated in many ways in regard to the decision that was taken as well as the problems that the company is facing, which can lead us to have different conclusions. We can say how MM Brands decision to take the organization to China due to low labor cost was mainly based on self-interest. We can also talk about how the senior manager promised that he will do anything possible to protect their jobs, but in this case the senior manager lost his ethical perspective. The senior manager promised something and ended up taking a job somewhere else, and in this situation you can that he didn’t think about the consequences of his decision and how it could affect the works as well as his relationship with the fellow employees. The decision that was taking by both of the organization and the manager was based on their own interest. This decision has damaged the workers who did not get any sort of pay benefits because they have been laid off by the organization.
