Struggling businesses all too often translates directly into job losses. Thousands of people lost their jobs when Woolworth’s closed, many more are being made redundant from struggling car manufacturers. RBS has also announced its intention to lose a large number of jobs as part of its restructuring.

Is it right for companies to make thousands of workers redundant or do they have a duty to protect their employees in difficult economic times? This is actually not an easy question. Business ethics suggests different answers to it, depending on the ethical perspective you take, and also depending on the circumstances in which the company and its employees find themselves.

Employment definition in a dictionary.
[image © copyright Photos.com]

On the one hand, a utilitarian perspective suggests that companies must do what brings the greatest benefit and the least costs for all concerned. This might well mean having to reduce their workforce if this means the company can stay afloat and thus continue to offer employment to the remaining employees.

On the other hand, care ethics suggests that companies have a particular responsibility to those who are dependent on them, which would normally include their employees.

It may not be reasonable to expect companies to keep employing people if there is a serious downturn in business, which is expected to be more than a momentary blip. But if the company is not actually facing closure and particularly if it is a large and profitable company, perhaps it is not unreasonable to expect it to put some thought into how it can help employees threatened by unemployment, so that the transition is eased and they may find other employment more easily.

Courses

• Ethics in Real Life
• Introduction to Business Studies
• Business Organisations in their Environment

Take it further

• Ethics bites: business ethics
• 24 hour working
• Dealing with redundancy

About the author

Anja Schaefer is a Lecturer in Management at the Open University Business School. She’s been lecturing in marketing and corporate social responsibility for eight years. Anja has published material on consumer behaviour, sustainable consumption and corporate environmental management.

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But there are problems with this nice idea of greening the world through marketing. And that’s not even so much that companies do it in order to increase sales or profits. Of course they do. They are not charities, after all. And if it really delivered the environmental goods, why would it matter? The programme already lists quite a few problems with the various environmental targets and actions described by retailers.

It’s all a bit much for the average consumer

No, the biggest problem is that expecting consumer demand to drive a green revolution may not work. There is no doubt a (small) segment of dedicated green consumers who will go to significant lengths in order to inform themselves about the environmental footprint of their consumption and to reduce this as much as possible. But how many consumers will really be able to interpret carbon footprints on product information, even if Tesco’s actually manage to calculate these with any degree of accuracy? And that is only one environmental issue to worry about. In addition there are things like packaging, organic production, sustainable resource use, and so on and so forth. It’s all a bit much for the average consumer even to get interested in, never mind knowledgeable about.

And, if taken to natural conclusions, green consumption would surely require some sacrifices, i.e. no strawberries in winter, less cod and many more. Can we really expect millions of individuals to make these decisions for themselves so that the green demand then can trickle through the supply chain? More likely it would at least require some concerted action from consumers, government and industry to start tackling the problem. Market forces alone may not solve it.

Further reading

• Take if further - learn more about green marketing and other ethical issues in business with an Open University course
• Video: big business goes green - watch the leaders of Tesco and M&S explain their plans
• How green is your High Street? - giants of the high street are spending millions going green, but what are their motives? The Money Programme investigates.
• Does it cost too much to be green? - neither hybrid cars nor organic food come cheap

About the author

Anja Schaefer is a Lecturer in Management at the Open University Business School. She’s been lecturing in marketing and corporate social responsibility for eight years. Anja has published material on consumer behaviour, sustainable consumption and corporate environmental management.

Subscribe to Anja Schaefer's posts

 

Yet, the solution of turning motorway services into a sort of retail centre, as explained in 'Motorway Attractions', leaves me feeling uneasy.

Overcrowded motorways and service areas epitomize one of the problems of our time: we all use our cars too much. Also, too many of the goods we buy are transported over long distances. We live in a consumer society. We have access to a previously unknown quantity and variety of consumer goods, and shopping has become a major pastime.

This enjoyment comes at a heavy price. Choked motorways are only one problem. Overflowing landfill sites have to take all the packaging and all those nice new goods at the end of their - sometimes very short - useful life. Global warming is linked to the energy used for travel and for the production and transportation of all those consumer goods we enjoy.

In this context, motorway service areas as retail havens ring all sorts of alarm bells. Do we really need yet more retail centres where we can spend yet more time, buying yet more things? And do we really want to encourage yet more traffic in order to get to such retail centres?

Perhaps there are different ways of consuming and enjoying ourselves, which still allow us to flow with the crowd, to hunt for new objects, to show off our good taste, to bring variety into our lives. Quirky second-hand markets, colourful farmers’ shops, exchange and sharing schemes: could we as a society make more use of these and thus give our poor roads and the environment a break?

Maybe then motorway service stations could concentrate on what they were meant to provide, that is clean toilets, decent hot food and a chance to stretch our legs on those unavoidable journeys.

Further reading

• Calling companies to account – explore the tactics used to keep companies in line
• Your trip at what cost? – what is the environmental impact of your holiday choices?
• The End of Over-Consumption: Towards a Lifestyle of Moderation and Self-Restraint by Marius De Geus, published by International Books
• The Myth of Green Marketing: Tending our Goats on the Edge of Apocalypse by Toby Smith, published by University of Toronto Press

About the author

Anja Schaefer is a Lecturer in Management at the Open University Business School. She’s been lecturing in marketing and corporate social responsibility for eight years. Anja has published material on consumer behaviour, sustainable consumption and corporate environmental management.

Subscribe to Anja Schaefer's posts