Case-Business Ethics

Case-Business Ethics

Question#1

Efficacy of Monsanto's Ethical Culture

Yes, it does. Ethical culture means to assert the supreme importance of the ethical factor in all relations of life, personal, social, national, and international, apart from any theological or metaphysical considerations (Encyclopaedia, 2013). Yet on the other side, Monsanto seems to be following ethical corporate responsibility by ensuring to keep the environment pollution free. Since, this is connected with the responsibility of the company toward environment hence it is mandatory to follow the prescribed ethical and social responsibilities. This can be analysed from the case that they spent around 15 million for crop research (Ferrel et al., 2013). Moreover, the importance of the research is clear for industry like Monsanto as they cannot compete if they are not producing the innovative or effective crops. Various funds were also assigned for the poor Brazilians in order to help them maintaining good and hygienic health. However, certain thing required to be solved such as:

Monsanto's regulation has become a financial burden to many farmers

Farmers who buy from Monsanto could not save seed for further growth

Now farmers are looking for an easy way to solve this problem so that they can reach to an ethical solution. The company seems to be very centralized and only top authority have right to take any decision.

The code of conduct mentioned on the website of the company states that whenever you doubt on particular ethical decision, one can easily seek the guidance from the Director or General Counsel of the company. Moreover, the code of conduct reflect that in case of failure to reporting of potential violation or any other violation of code of conduct if observed might lead to severe reaction from the company. In this case termination can also be a form of reaction to potential violation of the code of conduct. Hence, once can report this using suitable and accessible communication mode such as mail, phone, etc. (Monsanto, 2013).

The above statement seems great and promises certain things for the direct stakeholders of the company, but no such information is available on the company's website regarding the other stakeholders of the company. Over a few decades, Monsanto has been hiding about the environmental pollution that is harmful for people. The stakeholders lost the confidence over the company due to the falling stock prices. However, when Hugh took over the position as a CEO of Monsanto, the company started growing ...