Question

A student in a prior iteration of the course offered the opinion that a foreign company producing and manufacturing in any other country should adhere to the most stringent standard, whether it be the standards established in the host country, those of the company’s home country, or the company’s own internal standards. [C.Y. , February, 2019, Bohpal].

Keeping this in mind, what does a company do if the government of the host country insists on taking control of the project to some extent, as was the case in Bohpal?

This leads to critical concerns related to companies investing in ventures in foreign countries - particularly when doing so as FDIs. The reality is, just as in joint ventures between various business entities, the more actors (be they governments or commercial interests) that have the ability to control standards and procedures, the more difficult it becomes to assess blame.

At this point, meticulous record keeping can come into play. If UCC had wanted to implement its own, more stringent, standards and the Indian government pushed back, UCC could create and maintain a clear and complete paper trail noting its objections and the reasons for any actions taken. But - beware before launching into this course. It is also possible that the meticulous paper trail could backfire and be used to demonstrate that UCC knew the standards were too lax but forged ahead anyway. (Something like the argument made in the 1990s case against McDonald's over the temperature of its coffee.)

Business is driven by multiple factors depending upon the need of the company and that of the host country. This can lead to cutting corners and is an excellent time to consider ethics as a guiding principle.

Building on these concepts, imagine you are the Project Manager a company considering building a plant in a foreign country. You have been tasked with writing the ethical guidelines for all actions by the company in the country as well as the policy for record keeping. How do these two responsibilities clash and how are they complementary? In other words, you want to make sure your record keeping protects the company rather than exposing it to potential legal liabilities, but you want to maintain ethical behavior. How do you write the policies to achieve both goals? These questions are open to all.

Answer 1

answer-

Policies to achieve maintaining the ethical nature of work in another country and protect the record keeping-

My company will have the policy for the environment-

as we want to operate in another country and open a new plant to we has to make sure that environment like local surroundings, water and land resources etc are not affected by our business activities in project.

My company will focus on following the legal system of another country-

Every country's legal system are different so my company making plant in other country will have guidelines which are consistent with that country's legal system like following the consumer protection laws, employee benefit laws, worker's safety laws, etc.

My company will maintain the privacy of customers and its employees-

The data collected from business in different country will be protected by any measures like encryption, password protection etc so that data is secured and is used by authorized person not other entities outside the company.

My company will have code of ethics in place-

The code of ethics is the written document in which i would describe what type of behavior is required like honesty, fairness, hard work, punctuality while which is not required like abusive at work, violation of company's policies and country's laws, alcohol consumption etc.