Question

The most common ethical issues in international business involve

Employment practices
Human rights
Environmental pollution
Corruption

Moral Obligations and Social Responsibility refers to the idea that business people should take the social consequences of economic actions into account when making business decisions, and that there should be a presumption in favor of decisions that have both good economic and good social consequences.

What are the moral obligations of multinational companies with regard to the common ethical issues?

In this discussion we will focus on the global environmental issues. We will evaluate employment practices and human rights in other assignments.

Is globalization the cause of global environmental issues? Do you think globalization can be the cure for these issues?

Here is a great article from the OECD sources that you should read before posting your comments.

What is the impact of globalization on the environment https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/c476f1a4-a9b0-4b89-bd32-e61b13973c14

Answer 1

.Globalisation refers to all those processes by which peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world society. Development of globalisation also leads to the existence of Multinational companies who engage in global business. This also led to global interdependence whereby countries depend on each other through exporting and importing. Several issues arose, that causes the Multinational companies to focus on their ethical behaviour, economic development in host countries, environmental and social responsibility, but despite of that there are some Multinational companies involved in ethically questionable practises that leads to conflicts and that’s the genesis of ethical dilemma which takes the shapes of human rights, environmental, employee rights, and obligations of moral and corruption.

In Employment Practices, when work conditions in a host nation are clearly inferior to those in a multinational’s home nation, companies must decide which standards to apply. When work conditions in a host nation are clearly inferior to those in a multinational's home nation, firms should establish minimal acceptable standards that safeguard the basic rights and dignity of employees and do an audit of the foreign subsidiaries regularly. This is to ensure all human rights are adhered to this ids because some basic human rights such as; freedom of: association, speech, assembly, movement, and political expression are still not taken into consideration by some developing countries. Through inward investment by a multinational firm, they can trigger economic, political, and social progress that ultimately improves the rights of people. Although some fear that some governments can be too oppressive for business development. . Also, when environmental regulations in host nations are far inferior to those in the native nation, ethical issues arise. This might result in higher levels of pollution from the operations of multinationals than would be allowed at home. A multinational should not feel free to pollute in a developing nation. A legislation was passed in 1997 which obliges member states to make the bribery of foreign public officials a criminal offense.

Globalization therefore can be a cure to this dilemma in a number of ways outlined above. Moreover, in order to deal with the ethical dilemmas effectively, multinational companies can embrace either of these two effective ways. That is, ethical relativism and ethical universalism. Ethical relativism refers to doing business in a country by following strictly to its culture and ethics whereas ethical universalism means that the same ethical standards are the same and it is applied to all countries that the multinational companies is doing business with it. But in either way, they should balance between the width and depth to ensure that they maintain ethical standards