Question

ETHICAL DILEMMA: 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 of Thailand to finalize a two-year supply contract. Arriving there and talking to the sales manager, you are able to arrange a deal that supplies you with the toys at a third of the cost currently charged by your Portuguese supplier, but with equivalent quality and supply arrangements. In order to check the reliability of the manufacturing process, you ask the manager to show you around the place. You are surprised to find out that there is no real workshop on the premises, Rather, the production process is organized such that at 6 am, about 30 men line up at the company's gate, load large boxes with toy components on their little 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 large family, 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 five to 14, who are working busily-and from what you see, very cheerfully-together with the parents, while the grandmother is looking after the food in an adjacent room. In the evening, at around 8 pm, the day's work is done, the assembled toys are stored back in the boxes and taken to the workshop of the company, where the men receive their payment_ for the finished goods. 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 that guarantees a good level of quality. Satisfied, you tell the Thai manager that you will conclude the paperwork once you get back home, and you leave the company offices happy in the knowledge of the cost savings you are going to make, and quietly confident that it will result in a healthy bonus for you at the end of the year. On your way back, white 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 your company's toys. Based on your spontaneous immediate decision, can you set out the reasons for your choice? Also, can you relate those reasons back to some underlying values or principles that are obviously important to you? The correct answer, please

Answer 1

Though the practice does not violate any regulations related to the industry, it is of ethical concern, as the children are contributing to their parents' work (and thus earning money for them) on expense of their education and learning, which they would otherwise gained by exploring their surroundings, socal interactions and proper schooling, as children in the developed world do. There is no need to mention that poverty and inequality forces them to do so, but it is unethical on the part of the company to engage in such partnership knowingly.

The reasons for spontaneous decision are related to personal gains for the manager ( who would get performance bonus) and the company ( which would be able to reduce the cost to one third and thus improving profitability) which is obviously important to be competitive in the industry. Digging deep, it is not difficult to understand that by entering into such association, while on one hand the company is contributing to their livelihood and economic well being, but also robbing the children of their childhood and education, thus depriving them of their good future, which it could have avoided. The company policy would also, most probably find this association against the ethical values.

If the company it to enter in this arangement, it needs to ensure that the children at least get proper education so as to ensure better future and to make sure that their skills don't remain confined to the toy making. For this, it can open a dedicated school for the children which should be mandatory for each associate to get business. Proper execution and monitoring would save the company this ethical dilemma.