Malden Mills is a textile industry that flourished under the leadership of Aaron Feuerstein. In 1995, the organization was burnt down to ashes by a fire outbreak. The chief executive officer, Mr. Aaron did an extraordinary thing. Instead of laying off the 3,000 employees of the organization, he kept them on the payroll. Later the organization was declared bankrupt. Several kinds of literature have depicted that organizations need to have effective leaders who will be able to make extraordinary decisions to propel the organization to greater heights. Additionally, such leaders are fully aware that they owe credit to their employees as they are the most important resource an organization has. It is again leaders that nurture and support social responsibility which in turn dictates how the organization will be viewed in the eyes of the various stakeholders.
The notion held by Aaron that the CEO must take care of shareholders and at the same time have full responsibility to the community and employees is a view that is possible currently in the world of business. Indeed this is what has been used as a competitive advantage in most organizations that have been listed in Fortune 500. However, there is a need to balance the responsibility so that the primary aim of the company to make a profit is not jeopardized (Boatright, 2009).
It is no doubt that vision coupled with mission statements as well as values are key components in driving an organization in the right direction. Vision represents a company’s core values as well as the purpose for its identity providing inspiration and principles. For Aaron, his vision centered on making employees feel like partners, with this he felt that treating them well will in turn make them feel motivated and give their best to the organization (Boatright, 2009). On the other hand, Welch’s vision leaves employees out of focus and aims at making a profit at the expense of workers. Although there are justifications, such as greed to make a profit, in the end, cannot work for a company like Malden Mill, thus Aaron’s vision in my view is the best as it is in line with CSR and centers in employees the most important asset to an organization.
Due to globalization, the world has turned into a global village; with this came the concept of doing business beyond borders. One organization that has gone far and beyond in doing business in other countries is Google; a well-known search engine. According to Yagan, 2006 it is fact businesses that intend to set bases in other countries need to fully comply with several state and federal laws, policies and regulations. Although it was torn initially on whether to or not to comply with Chinese laws that would have compromised their mission hence conflicting with its core principles.
Another principle that was also used in guided the creation of Google. cn was the desire to sort out a global set of data making it useful and within reach to all individuals despite geographical, time, and race differences. However, the demand from the government of China to censor some of the information jeopardized such a mission. Thirdly faith and trust are a set of principles that guided the development of china’s search engine (Boatright, 2009). All these three principles were aimed at making the business be in line with government regulations and law as well as meeting users’ demands and expectations. With technological advancement, there are contents that government restricts its public from accessing; this has brought a born of contention between governments and its citizens and to an extent the businesses that provide such innovations.
In my view based on business ethics, Google in its effort to redirect its searchers to Hong Kong was a bold move to protect the rights of the Chinese especially access to information and freedom of speech. The uncensored information always kept the Chinese updated. Similarly, it is worth noting that although governments propagate for freedom of speech, expression, and access to information, they call for censorship of certain information. In my opinion, the actions were taken by Google, Cisco, and Microsoft did enable censorship on the internet to an extent (Yagan, 2006). These companies did arrive at some agreement with the government to block certain information from reaching the general public. For instance, Cisco sold to china government internet filtering and surveillance equipment.
References
Boatright, J. (2009). Ethics and the Conduct of Business. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Yagan, J. (2006). Working around the Great Firewall of China: Recommendations for U.S. Internet Companies: Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative. (Student Paper No. 2. 2-42). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.