Business Ethics

Business Ethics

Introduction

When companies are looking to invest in different countries or locate offices in these countries, management often tries to execute a political, ethical, economic, and legal analysis of this country. The analysis can be known as the external macro-environment, which can range in size of a big city to an entire country. The components of this analysis relate to working conditions, credit availability, the prevailing economic system, and that the city or the country's position on the spectrum of growth, and last but not the least, it also includes the ethical and social work they do for the society.

A company of a new macro-environment with an eye toward basing all or part of its activities there, the labor market is a crucial element of the equation. For example, one country may require a minimum wage and to mandate a cap on hours worked per week, while another country might be much more permissive with management. Besides cost, other work-related factors include the unemployment rate (labor availability), the current skill level of the workforce in the region, and other labor laws affecting foreign business there. In this paper, we are going to discuss the political, ethical, economic and legal analysis of the countries in which Total Petroleum and Barclays Bank operate. We have chosen the market of United States for Barclays Bank and Saudi Arabia for Total Petroleum.

Total Petroleum

Total is a company oil French private, part of super majors, that is to say the six largest companies worldwide, with ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP and ConocoPhillips. This is the 1st French company in terms of turnover , the 6th Company of Europe and 14th worldwide company in 2010 (Fortune Global 500 in 2010) and the 1st market capitalization in the euro area at 31 December 2008. Its activities cover the entire production chain, from extraction of crude oil and natural gas to create energy, refining, and commercial exploitation. Total is also a major company in the field of chemistry. Total SA is the fourth group of private oil and gas worldwide and first company in France, its country of origin.

Experts estimate that gas consumption in the coming years is expected to grow faster than other fossil fuels. Is fully integrated in this future market, Total is positioned across the gas chain: generation, transmission, storage, management of power plants and supply of most large industrial consumers. The Gas & power management cares about the challenges of gas development, including marketing, business much more difficult than for oil. In addition, Total is now positioned on two new sectors related to new energy: the solar and biotechnology. Regarding solar, strategy is displayed vertically integrate along the solar chain (from silicon to modules photovoltaic cells through) on the one hand, and in industrial projects of solar power plants of other hand (the project in Shams Abu Dhabi is one example). For biotechnology, Total intends to position itself on biofuels. The entrance to the capital of the ...