AN ETHICAL DILEMMA 3
(source: Crane A. and Matten D. (2010) Business Ethics.3rd edn. Oxford, p99)
Producing Toys - Child's Play
You are the product manager of a confectionery company that includes small plastic toys with its chocolate sweets, Having met a potential Thai manufacturer of these toys at a trade fair in Europe, you now visit the company in the North Eastern part ofThailand to finalize a two-year supply contract. Arriving there and talking to the sales manager you are able to arrange a deal which supplies you with the toys at a third ofthe cost currently charged by your Portuguese supplier, but with equivalent quality andsupply arrangements. In order to check the reliability of the manufacturing process you ask the manager toshow you around the place. You are surprised to find out that there is no real workshopon the premises. Rather, the production process is organized such that at 6am, about 30 men line up at the company's gate, load large boxes with toy components on theirlittle carts or-motor-scooters and take the material to their homes.
Your prospective supplier then takes you to one of these places where you see a largefamily, sitting in a garage-like barn assembling the toys. Not only are the mother and father doing the job, but also the couple's six children, aged 5 to 14, who are workingbusily - and from what you see, very cheerfully - together with the parents, while thegrandmother is looking after the food in an adjacent room. In the evening, at around 8pm, the day's work is done, the assembled toys are stored back in the boxes and takento the workshop of the company where the men receive their payment for the finishedgoods. At the end of the week, the toys are shipped to the customers in Europe.
As you have never come across such a pattern of manufacturing, your Thai partner explains to you that this is a very common and well-established practice in this part of the country, and one which guarantees a good level of,quality. Satisfied, you tell the Thai manager that you will conclude the paperwork once you get back home, and youleave the company offices happy in the knowledge of the cost savings you're going tomake, and quietly confident that it will result in a healthy bonus for you at the end of the year.
On your way back, while buying some souvenirs for your five- and seven-year-old nieces at the airport, you suddenly start wondering if you would like to see them growing up the same way as the child workers that you have just employed to make yourcompany's toys.
Questions:For this essay you are required to place yourself in the role of the product manager and apply the learning and skills you have developed in this module to:
1. Use a Kantian deontological framework and principles to consider the issues raised by the case for those affected by any decision you make;
2. Apply the principles to enable you to decide what you should do and ;
3. Explain and justify the decision, again drawing on Kantian ethical theory.