Critical Thinking and Discussion Questions
. A visiting American executive finds that a foreign subsidiary in a less
developed country has hired a 12-year-old girl to work on a factory
floor, in violation of the company’s prohibition on child labor. He tells
the local manager to replace the child and tell her to go back to school.
The local manager tells the American executive that the child is an
orphan with no other means of support, and she will probably become a
street child if she is denied work. What should the American executive
do?
Drawing on John Rawls’s concept of the veil of ignorance, develop an
ethical code that will (a) guide the decisions of a large oil multinational
toward environmental protection and (b) influence the policies of a
clothing company in their potential decision of outsourcing their
manufacturing operations.
. Under what conditions is it ethically defensible to outsource
production to the developing world where labor costs are lower
when such actions also involve laying off long-term employees in the
firm’s home country?
. Do you think facilitating payments (speed payments) should be ethical?
Does it matter in which country, or part of the world, such payments are
made?
