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Some csr questions for nike and wal mart
- From a broader CSR perspective, is Nike maximizing stakeholder value? Is it redistributing burdens and costs from customers and investors to its suppliers and their employees? Does CSR allow this redistribution of the corporate wealth form the shareholders to other stakeholders? (Think about Friedman's arguments here.
- If it is necessary to trade off stakeholder stakes as both Wal Mart and Nike do, which trade off is more just? Nike's distribution of its wealth from its stockholders to the needy manifested in its efforts to improve the working conditions and income of the employees of its suppliers? Or Wal Mart's distribution of benefits to its stockholders and its comparatively prosperous customers?
- Which model would Friedman prefer under the his version of the shareholder view of CSR? Explain and evaluate.
- Which model would be preferable by Evan and Freeman under the stakeholder view? Who are Nike and Wal Mart's stakeholders? What are their stakes? How should the wealth produced by these two corporations be distributed among their stakeholders?
- Werhane, in her alliance model, argues for the importance of a CSR model that decentralizes the corporation and facilitates morally imaginative solutions. Why does she argue that Nike's program is than Wal Mart's from this perspective? What could Wal Mart do to improve its CSR on the alliance view?
Facing the aids challenge in africa
- The widespread and devastating effects of the AIDS epidemic in Africa are well known. But what are the responsibilities of corporations in the face of this terrible CSR challenge? Should they do business as usual and allow others who are perhaps more qualified respond to this pervasive social problem? Or should they recognize a broader responsibility to channel their wealth, knowledge and expertise toward mitigating this social problem?
- Pharmaceutical corporations invest huge amounts of money in research and development. The market place is a good place for both encouraging this necessary risk and for distributing it among several groups and interests. Developing new medicines requires costly research. So Friedman's question is highly pertinent here: does imposing CSR on a corporation do more harm than good because it interferes with the delicate mechanism of the market?
- At any point along the way, the product may not meet expectations, a competitor may beat the pharmaceutical to the market, the regulatory process may delay or even prevent sale, and so on. The rewards from patenting a successful medicine are astoundingly high. But heavy, possibly devastating losses are also possible. Adding CSR to the mixture may be the formula for corporate disaster.
- Pharmaceutical corporations also face daunting challenges from regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration. New products must be exhaustively and painstakingly tested to avoid problems that have arisen in the past such as the Dalkon Shield and Thalidomide. Again, considerable effort must be expended in exploring the middle and long term consequences accompanying product and drug use, and all of this before the product can be marketed and profits made. Government regulation also raises another problem. Is government prodding necessary to force corporations into a proper CSR posture? Or should corporations be allowed to develop voluntarily their own CSR responses?
- In the case at hand, pharmaceutical companies have invested considerable resources to carry out research into medicines that control HIV infection and prevent it from developing into full-blown AIDS. But these treatments are very expensive and bring with them considerable side effects. An anti-AIDS chemical cocktail can cost patients in developed nations between 15 and 20 thousand dollars per patient per year. This is far beyond the financial resources available to a typical HIV/AIDS patient in Africa. Some NGOs and critics of the pharmaceutical industry accuse the latter of gouging victims and drawing excess profits from the misfortune of others. A spokesperson for "Doctors Without Borders," for example, claims that the AIDS treatment "cocktail" that costs U.S. patients 15 to 20 thousand dollars could be made available to Africans at less than 300 dollars per patient per year. Pharmaceuticals, according to their critics, need to rethink their CSR, cease operating as for-profit businesses, and make these drugs available to third world sufferers at cost.
- What are the CSRs of multinational pharmaceutical corporations for making HIV/AIDS drugs available to victims in the poverty-stricken nations of Africa? Are they responsible for charging what the market will bear? Assuming they have the right to recoup their heavy investment in research, should governments, recognizing the necessity of compensating drug companies for their research, buy these drugs and redistribute them at little or no cost to those who can't afford them? Or should the pharmaceuticals charge more to those who can pay and less to those who cannot? (This redistributes the burden of cost from the haves to the have nots.)
- Many NGOs have taken the stance that their responsibility lies in pressuring drug companies to do the right thing and donate medicines to patients who cannot pay. This is their corporate social responsibility, and the pharmaceutical industry certainly has enough money to do this.
- But others have tried to reframe this issue using moral imagination. Treating individuals for HIV infection once they have contracted it is expensive no matter how you look at it. But, redefining the problem, can moderate and affordable measures be taken to prevent the spread of the disease?
- This is the imaginative approach taken by the Female Health Company which has initiated a widespread effort to distribute condoms to those at risk for contracting AIDS.
- How does the approach of the FHO exemplify Werhane's alliance model? How should pharmaceutical companies respond to this kind of initiative? Is it necessary to frame the relation between the pharmaceutical industry and NGOs as an adversarial relation or should broader alliances be formed that coordinate the efforts of these groups?
Source:
OpenStax, Engineering ethics modules for ethics across the curriculum. OpenStax CNX. Oct 08, 2012 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col10552/1.3
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