Business Ethics and Virtue Ethics - Mattel Toy Company - Research Paper Example

? Business Ethics and Virtue Ethics Insert Introduction Mattel Toy Company is a well known company responsible for the production oftoys in the world. This paper will use an article written by S. Prakash Sethi on how the Mattel toy industry revolves in order to meet the global manufacturing principles of industries as required by the management of the industry. The management of the Mattel toy industries, which is the largest toy company in the world, came up with the plan of formulating a code called the global manufacturing principles, which will help to create the public image of the company in terms of ethical standards. The code was founded in order for the companies to eliminate the awful culture portrayed by fellow companies and industries of unfairly low wages to their workers, long working hours and unsafe working environment, which may lead to the threat of the workers safety. The putting into action of the global manufacturing principles seemed to a stiff step for the Mattel toy company because it lead to the growth of more challenges in the company. This paper will use the virtues of honesty, temperance, and generosity amongst their workers in order to solve the problems facing the Mattel toy company. The company faces the following issues working conditions, worker safety, fairness, and organizational attitudes towards the environment. According to researchers in the field of ethical standards in companies, they suggest that it is important on how the companies recruit workers who posses good ethical virtues to their respective companies. This is conducted in order to make it definite that the relevant company will grow to develop its goal and vision to the benefit of the company and the public (Sethi, Veral et al. 2011). Honesty The term honesty refers to the virtue by which a person can be said to be frank and truthful to the public. It can also be expressed as the act of a person being free from any fraud activity. The existence of honesty in a company will affect positively the working conditions, the level of organizational attitude and the safety of the working parties in the company. On the point of improving and maintaining, the working conditions will be effective in the Mattel toy company by making sure that employees of the company enjoy working with the company. This would be possible when the leaders of the company take into heart the virtue of honesty into their own heart and duties. The accumulation of the virtue will enable them to present the bad working conditions of their juniors to the management board of the company in a lawful way. This will help in making sure that the funds allocated to them after presenting the issues will be well spent in the favor of improving the working conditions of the employees. The presence of having leaders in a company who have the virtue of telling the truth in a company will be crucial for the company because the employees can copy the good ethic standard of being honest. This will help because the employees will conduct their duties in an honest manner, which will benefit the Mattel toy company a lot (Sethi, Veral et al. 2011). In some cases, managers in companies do not portray the virtue of honesty towards their employees in terms of the level of income. This is evident when the managers take the advantage of their hierarchy of authority in the companies to mistreat the workers by paying them low salary levels, which is against the set agreement based by the employee and the management board. This makes the working environment unfavorable for the workers. These experiences of employees in other companies drives the main motive of the Mattel toy company to set the new code of ethics in which the working conditions of the employees in the company are meet with strict action in regardless of their power and authority in the company. The working conditions expected to be addressed by the global manufacturing principles in the ethical code include the amount expected to be paid to each worker is reviewed after a certain period of time in a honesty manner and the consideration of the safety of all workers by formulating relevant plans in a fair manner (Raatama, 2000). Temperance The virtue temperance can be explained as the state by which a person posses the character of moderation and self-restraint in his or her behavior. The virtue of temperance mainly revolves around the desires of humans on their greatest pleasures, which are resulted from their normal activities in life. In case of the lack of temperance in someone, the person will suffer from the poor emotional and personality development. The virtue of temperance in the Mattel’s journey of implementing the code of ethics in the company is very important. This is important because the emergence of more challenges in the company while accomplishing the required achievements makes many of the required parties to lose hope in the process. This lead to the slowdown of implementing the process. This resulted to the idea of installing the virtue of temperance in the employees by the management board. The installation of the virtue made the workers love what they are doing for the company therefore making them work in moderation while implementing the new code. The development of a temperance in the field of business will help in the creation of organizational altitude among the workers of the company will be motivated to work more towards achieving the goal of the company. The achievement of the goals will help in the growth of the company’s image (William, 2010). Fairness The term fairness is always linked to the concept of presenting justice to someone or a certain group of people. Fairness will help in the differentiation of what is good and what is bad. The manner of being equal can also mean as being fair because it means that it is how someone will get something amongst a group of people competing in a way, which is favorable to all parties in the way no case of fraud or injustice is reported (Fritz & Vaidya, 2005) In the case of the Mattel toy company, it was important for the company to make sure that there was a favorable level of fairness in the company. This was because the company would implement the set objectives stated in the new code in a fair manner without favoring or keeping ones or someone’s interest first. The fairness in the toy company would make the company to strive for brilliance and creativity in every feature of the toy making business. The presence of the workers having the virtue of fairness in them makes it possible for the Mattel Company to contain fairness in their company’s set of values. The set of values will make it possible for the company to achieve the main ambition of the new code of ethics which is to make the company unique amongst other companies in the world by provide a good ethical standards to its workers and to its customers (Fritz & Vaidya, 2005). Conclusion According to me, the use of virtues in the Mattel case is the best option because a virtue is a good attribute and a strong foundation of a good moral being in the life of a human being. The presence of having a good virtue will make an individual to execute his or her activities in a good way resulting to greatness. This virtue in the Mattel case will make the company to achieve the global manufacturing principles in a fair, honest and just way to the relevant parties (Barboza & Story, 2007). References Barboza, D & Story, L (2007). July 26, ‘Toy Making in China, Mattel’s Way’, New York Times magazine. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/business/26toy. Fritz, A & Anand, V (2005). Business Ethics: Fairness and justice in the workplace. London, Sage publications Raatama. L, (2000). Character Education: honesty, California, capstone press. ISBN 0-7368-0369-6 Sethi, S., Veral, E., Shapiro, H., & Emelianova, O (2011). Mattel, Inc: Global Manufacturing Principles (GMP) - A Life-Cycle Analysis of a Company-Based Code of Conduct in the Toy Industry. Journal of Business Ethics, 99(4), 483-517. ProQuest on June 1, 2012 retrieved from http://ethicsops.com/CharacterVirtue.aspx William H. S (2010). Business Ethics: A Textbook with Cases. Cengage Learning. ISBN 0495808768, 9780495808763 Read More