business

• Globalisation

  How do less developed countries NOT benefit from globalisation?

  Globalisation operates mostly in the interests of the richest countries, which continue to dominate world trade at the expense of developing countries

  The role of LEDCs (less economically developed countries) in the world market is mostly to provide the North and West with cheap labour and raw materials

  Critics of globalisation include groups such as environmentalists, anti-poverty campaigners and trade unionists.
• Corporate Social responsibility

  Milton Friedman

  • businesses have no other responsibility but to increase their profits
  • it is unethical to do anything other than this
  • taking money away from making profits to fund CSR projects is the same as stealing money from shareholders

  businesses take on CSR for many reasons - eg:

  • to promote themselves with potential customers - want to be viewed positively by customers - increase profit
  • improve facilities/ offer discounts for their employees to decrease the likelihood that they will go off to work for the competition which would decrease in profit
• Whistle-blowing

  case study: Erin Brockovich

  • contamination of drinking water with Chromium VI in the southern California town of Hinkley
  • Between 1952 and 1966, PG&E used the chemical to stop corrosion in the cooling tower.
  • The wastewater dissolved the chemical from the cooling towers and was discharged to unlined ponds at the site.
  • Some of the wastewater affected the groundwater nearby
  • caused a number of reported cancer cases in the area
  • The case was settled in 1996 for $333 million, the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in US history. 
• CSR

  example

  FTSE4Good has many investors - promote 'strong environmental, social and governance practices'

  • 2014: investors put over $34 trillion into funds committed to these principles
  • businesses make efforts to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions
• Globalisation

  the negative impacts of globalisation are not restricted to developing countries

  • manufacturing jobs in the West have been lost to lower-wage countries in the developing world - cheap labour increases business profits - justifiable according to Friedman

  Rana Plaza example

  2013: poorly-made Bangladeshi factory collapsed

  • supplied companies like Primark and Wal-Mart with low-cost clothing
  • over 1100 people died
  • over 2500 people were injured
  • the building was built without permits or any reinforcement of the heavy machines the clothes were made on
• Globalisation 


  Free Choice Defence

  “In a typical developing nation, if you’re able to work for an American multinational, you make eight times the average wage. That’s why people are lining up to get these jobs.”Johan Norberg – In Global Defence of Capitalism

  • The choice isn’t always a free one – there is no real alternative (but not physically forced)
  • But, are we powerless to offer other choices?
  • The individual has autonomy – are we limiting this?
• Globalisation 


  Better than Nothing Defence

  “...because a lousy job is better than none at all.”

  (National Centre for Policy Analysis)

  The question is, what if the alternative is nothing?

  e.g. Junk food is better than no food
• Globalisation


  
  

  Possibility Defence

  “Ought implies can." - Immanuel Kant

  • One only ought to do what one can do
  • It is about having a balance: a company has to work in the world as it is, not as it ideally ought to be