Question

Based on your experience and research, provide an example of an ethical situation faced by a business and discuss your recommendations for the best way for the business to handle the situation. Your submission should be approximately 500 words. Please spell check and grammar check your written work. In MS WORD

Answer 1

A real life example of an ethical situation that a company or a business recently faced is that of Unilever. Unilever is a Dutch company that makes soaps, detergents, shampoos etc, and owns famous brands like Dove.

The company makes fairness cream under the brand ‘Fair and Lovely’ and sells them mainly in Asian, Middle Eastern and African markets. Recently an advertisement for the brand showed a dark woman who morphs into a fair one after using the ‘Fair and Lovely’ face wash and face cream.

The company was blamed to foster a racist attitude through this advertisement and Unilever faced an ethical situation as well as an ethical dilemma. The dilemma in front of the company was that should the company, which wanted to achieve leadership in sustainable and responsible business practices, be selling products that tell and persuade people, especially women that they need to be fair.

In fact different advertisements of this brand emphasizes that women should be fair to find the love of their life, to gain professional success and recognition, and to develop self confidence. Perpetuating this ideology develops an ethical situation for Unilever as it is unethically harping on a point that is baseless and that is against its values of sustainable and responsible business practices. The message is hollow, artificial and hypocritical. It perpetuates not only racism but also sexism as well as inequality to a large extent. Wanting to be fair is not at all about personal freedom; in fact it is about gross racism. This makes the situation unethical for Unilever as it promotes fairness as an aspiration. The company is simply taking advantage of the entrenched cultural issues in markets where poverty as well as illiteracy is high. The company is artificially creating desirability in order to sell its products. This is not only unethical but also socially irresponsible. It is creating stereotypical images for its own benefit.

Unilever can handle this ethical situation. My recommendation for Unilever is that the company should stop focusing on the theme of fairness as it is belittling. The company cannot discontinue its range of fairness cream products under the ‘Fair and Lovely’ brand. So the company can revamp its advertisements and should instead focus on the need for having a clear skin i.e. skin that is free from blemishes, pimples, acne and other such skin problems. It will have to tweak its fairness cream and make them more functional. Instead of being a plain fairness cream the company’s line of products should promise women that the cream will help them to get rid of skin problems and provide them with a blemish free skin. Such a premise will be more function, based on providing utility to its users and in no way will perpetuate the message of racism, sexism and inequality in any way. There will be no discrimination based on skin color and the company will be able to pursue its leadership towards sustainable and responsible business practices.

(496 words)