International Business Ethics Case Study

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

In the words of Kirh O Hanson “business ethics is the study of the standards of business behavior which promotes human welfare and the good.”

In the international business arena, ethical problems arise out of mere international business transactions. Fair trade movement, transfer pricing, and fair wages, and human rights protection, are examples of dealings that fall within the domain of international business ethics. Similarly issues like child labor and cultural imperialism are critical enough to call upon the attention for international business ethics. Ethics is all about what is right or wrong, what is good or bad, what is acceptable or unacceptable. Thus we can say business ethics is all about adhering

The individuals exercising responsibility are challenged to make the right decisions often under considerable pressure and constraints of time and money. it becomes necessary not only to make business ethics more international but also to explore systematically the extremely rich but still largely ignored treasures of global moral and practical wisdom. ..( Stephan Rothlin and Dennis Mcann -springer ,2016).The growth of international business calls for the development of universal ethical standards,As Corporate and national cultures embody differing codes of conduct.and therefore Serious ethical lapses have damaged organizations as well as societies. (Janice M. Beyer, David Nino). . Business Ethics becomes a prerequisite for conducting any type of business, particularly in the global marketplace. Traditionally, there have been two views on the role of ethics in business. The first perspective is that the corporate executives’ sole responsibility is to maximize the shareholder’s value. The second view is that “ethics pays,” which implies that acting in a socially responsible way towards stakeholders will automatically enhance shareholder wealth (Verhezen, 2005).Child labor is certainly child Abuse which in turn is a serious issue, and employing child labor

More than 70% of the world’s cocoa is grown in the region, and the vast majority of that supply comes from two countries: Ivory Coast and Ghana, which together produce 60% of the global total. The two nations have a combined GDP of around $73 billion, according to the World Bank—or significantly less than Nestlé’s $100 billion in sales in 2015. Yet the global chocolate business would be thrown into chaos without them. Last year, Ivory Coast alone exported nearly 1.8 million metric tons of cocoa, or two-fifths of the world’s production. And demand for chocolate is going up, as a growing number of consumers in countries like China and India have more disposable income. The price of cocoa surged 13% in 2015 even as prices for most raw materials were dropping. Meanwhile the average farmer in each country still lives well below the international poverty line.(Fortune Investigation, Brian O'Keefe, march, 2016). It is notoriously hard to get accurate figures on trafficking. The International Labor Organization has estimated that about 21 million people in the world are victims of forced labor, and that some 5.5 million of them are children. Around the time of the Harkin-Engel agreement, it was frequently reported that some 15,000 children from neighboring West African countries were being held as slaves on farms in Ivory