Moral Challenges at Monsanto - Essay Example

? Moral Challenges at Monsanto of the Ethics at Monsanto Company Ethics is regarded as a system or set of moral ideals. It isoften stated as the standards of behavior that enlightens how human being should act in a particular situation (OracleThinkquest, n.d.). Ethics encompasses defending, systematizing and recommending concepts of wrong and right behavior (Fieser, 2009). Ethics is therefore an important practice in order to ensure fair and beneficial activities. Moreover ethical practices are also important for satisfying the basic needs of human being, uniting people and leadership, improving decision making, long term gains, securing the society and creating credibility. In the similar manner, ethical practices are also important for a company. From the perspective of an organization, ethics is concerned about the judging what is right and wrong. The decision making process of a company is also greatly influenced by its ethical guidelines and culture. Nevertheless, ethical practise help companies to attract new customers, satisfy employees, and attract investors for making investments in the company. On the other hand, unethical behavior may damage the reputation of a company and will hardly appeal to stakeholders. As a result of that the profit levels of the company may also decline (Tillotts, 2011). This study aim to shed light on the moral challenges or ethical dilemmas faced by Monsanto and evaluates the viability of the decisions made by them to deal with the prevailing scenario. It has been observed that the company has been experiencing ethical issues for a long period of time mostly due to its product portfolio, business models and the leadership styles. Monsanto Company is a multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation based in US. The company is currently headquartered at Creve Coeur, Missouri. It was founded in the year 1901 by John Francis Queeny. The company is known as the foremost producer of genetically engineered (GE) seeds. However, during its early days, the company was also known as one of the leading producers of plastics which include synthetic fibers and polystyrene. Some of the best selling products of the company are herbicides, pesticides, and crop seeds. The company has earlier produced a number of controversial products such as Agent Orange, PCBs, DDT, and recombinant bovine somatotropin (Yahoo Finance, 2013). With its strong research and development (R&D), and engineering department Monsanto has been able to achieve several acclamations. It is also the first company to have produced light emitting diodes or commonly known as LEDs. The current employee strength of the company is 21,000 (Monsanto, 2013). As of the financial year end 2011, the net revenue of the company was US$ 11.822 billion and operating income of Increase US$ 2.502 billion. The figure clearly portrays the stable financial position of the company. Despite of its strong financial position and well developed market, there are several allegations against the company in terms of its unethical leadership. In addition, ethical questions were also raised against the company because of their unscrupulous products. For example, the model of the company pertaining to seed patenting was also criticized and was regarded as biopiracy and moreover it was also a threat of the biodiversity. It has been observed that the activities of the company are unethical and devious at any angle. This is because of the company’s nature to control every thin they are involved into. For example, they strongly administer the production system, the distribution channel as well as the activities of the employee. Up till this practise, there is no scope of raising issue against the company pertaining to ethical guidelines. However, the ethical issues come up when the company tries to control even the consumption pattern of their products. This becomes more evident when the farmers were deceived while making contracts with the company. This forced the farmers to but seeds from the company at a higher price. This unethical business strategy of the company has left a number of farmers deprived. Apart from that another unethical activity of the company was related with the maneuvering of the governmental regulations. In this context, the company has always maintained a good relationship with governmental agencies and the politicians. For example, the company has always maintained a close relationship with the US Food and Drug Agency. Moreover, it has been also observed that people who are close to the company are strategically positioned at the higher positions. This allowed the company to take several unfair advantages. This greedy and dissolute business practise of the company is the reason behind them tagged as unethical business company. The unethical business practise of the company is almost visible in every department of the company. The latest one observed is their unethical leadership practise. Monsanto mainly pursues autocratic leadership style. With this approach to leadership the company aims to have command over its employees. They often try to have control over the personal lives of the employees and as a result of that most of the employees’ remain unsatisfied. The authoritative leadership of the company is therefore negatively impacting the morality of the employees. The corporate of culture of the company is also a cause behind the company’s unethical approach. The leadership style of the also should have been changed from authoritarian to transformational leadership (George, 2010). One of the major causes behind the company failing to maintain the ethical standards within the company and also failing to conduct business ethically is their incapability to put communitarianism into action. The immoral and unethical action simply resists them to fulfill their duties towards the society and other stakeholders. The company mainly aimed to maximize their profit margins by controlling farmers in terms of production and usage of the seeds. They never aimed for mutual benefit; rather their main aim was to “fatten their own pocket”. In addition, they also attempted to gain control and ultimate power over the people, with whom they work, governmental agencies and even the external stakeholders. One more major cause behind their audacity to carry out unethical practices and becoming more aggressive is the capability of the company to be in command of and influence highly ranked officials of government. However, lately the company understood that such approaches and practices will not be tolerated for much time and for that fear the company recently initiated several ethical programs. The principal intention of these programs is to promote ethical practices within the company and also conduct fair business. The findings above made it evident that Monsanto practices unethical behavior in every field. In addition, it was also uncovered that few officials of the company were also corrupt. As a result of the company has generated a negative public relation (PR) for themselves. However, when it comes to analyze the decisions made by the company for the purpose of increasing profit an generating more revenue, it’s truly impractical. This can be clearly demonstrated with the help of moral reasoning. Moral reasoning is simply a process of thinking with the purpose of settling on whether a particular idea or approach is right or wrong. According to the theories, an individual tries to identify the differences between the wrong and right by applying some logic to the thought process (Tangney, Stuewig & Mashek, 2007). For example, such situations are faced by people every day and they make the decision on the basis of reasoning the morality and also considering the weight of the consequence. It is also a fact that moral choices are fully personal, but sometimes moral choices are on the economic basis or personal profit. There are four components or moral behavior which is moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral motivation, and moral character (Rushton & Penticuff, 2007). Companies often put into practise the all these moral behaviors into practise. The moral sensitivity is the ability of the company to sense the ethical dilemma and how the actions of the company may affect others. The moral judgment speaks about the ability of the company to correctly determine what should be done to a particular situation. The moral motivation emphasizes on the ability of companies to remain committed to a particular moral action, irrespective of the outcome and accepting the accountability of the end result. The final moral behavior which is moral character signifies the ability of the company to embrace brave steps in spite of the presence of an easy way out. In the context of Monsanto, the company has hardly followed any one of the moral reasoning. Rather the company tried to remain disloyal and unethical towards the stakeholders and employees. The company could have continued their operation more transparently and systematically, but their voracity and ravenousness forced them to make such decisions. The only positive factor for these decisions of the company is that it helped the company to make more money and in turn that helped shareholders. Hence, the benefits were only limited to the company. Therefore the only conclusion to this study is that the company should withhold such practices and should also be more faithful towards the stakeholders. However, if the issue still persists, the customers should take a strong step in impeding such practices. One of the viable ways is to notify people about the malpractices of the company with the help of mass media. In addition, stiffer government regulation can also serve the purpose. References Fieser, J. (2009). Ethics. Retrieved from http://www.iep.utm.edu/ethics/. George, B. (2010). True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Monsanto. (2013). Top 25 World’s Best Multinational Workplaces. Retrieved from http://www.monsanto.com/careers/Pages/top-25-worlds-best-multinational-workplaces.aspx/. OracleThinkquest. (n.d.). Defining Ethics. Retrieved from http://library.thinkquest.org/12160/defin.htm. Rushton, C. H. & Penticuff, J. H. (2007). A Framework for Analysis of Ethical Dilemmas in Critical Care Nursing. AACN Advanced Critical Care, 10 (3), 323-328. Tangney, J. P., Stuewig, J. & Mashek, D. J. (2007). Moral Emotions and Moral Behaviour. Annu. Rev. Psychol, 58, 347-372. Tillotts. (2011). Code of Business Ethics. Retrieved from http://www.tillotts.com/ethics-code. Yahoo Finance. (2013). Monsanto Company (MON)-NYSE. Retrieved from http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=MON+Profile. Read More