Eth 501 Case 3 Mnc
ETH 501
Case 3
Business Ethics
Introduction
In reviewing the case for module three on Mattel I couldn’t help but notice how similar a case study this was to another multinational corporation (MNC). That corporation is Nike. It seems that around the time I was entering my teenage years more and more corporations where being placed under this microscope. This was a direct correlation of globalization. Every industry leader has gone through this as a result of being a industry leader and a trailblazer in globalization; Wal-mart in retail, Nike in shoes and Mattel in toys. Still, in all investigative coverage there is the one that rips the lid of and sheds light on a world we couldn’t have imagined and have never seen.
The video investigative journal would become famous for many things but it is most famously known for exposing sexual predators on the internet. It was in response to the medium of the internet and how predators had a new technology to pray on children. But the Dateline Special that is important to this case is the infamous on that aired on December 17, 1996 (Sethi, 2011). This was the infamous Mattel reporting dealing with its labor force and wages for overseas workers in countries such as China and Indonesia (Sethi, 2011). The damaging piece of information exposed during the Dateline show was underage workers that were required to work long hours with mandatory overtime requirements (Sethi, 2011). This couldn’t have come at a worse time for the corporation who was trying to slash cost with a new, just dusted off CEO of a month looking for spending cuts as much as possible. None the less this is what started the change in how the toy industry specifically the way the toys are manufactured and more importantly by who? The rest of the case will discuss the steps that Mattel took to improve work environment for workers in these overseas factories. I will also attempt to answer all three points over the remainder of this paper;
Case 3
Business Ethics
Introduction
In reviewing the case for module three on Mattel I couldn’t help but notice how similar a case study this was to another multinational corporation (MNC). That corporation is Nike. It seems that around the time I was entering my teenage years more and more corporations where being placed under this microscope. This was a direct correlation of globalization. Every industry leader has gone through this as a result of being a industry leader and a trailblazer in globalization; Wal-mart in retail, Nike in shoes and Mattel in toys. Still, in all investigative coverage there is the one that rips the lid of and sheds light on a world we couldn’t have imagined and have never seen.
The video investigative journal would become famous for many things but it is most famously known for exposing sexual predators on the internet. It was in response to the medium of the internet and how predators had a new technology to pray on children. But the Dateline Special that is important to this case is the infamous on that aired on December 17, 1996 (Sethi, 2011). This was the infamous Mattel reporting dealing with its labor force and wages for overseas workers in countries such as China and Indonesia (Sethi, 2011). The damaging piece of information exposed during the Dateline show was underage workers that were required to work long hours with mandatory overtime requirements (Sethi, 2011). This couldn’t have come at a worse time for the corporation who was trying to slash cost with a new, just dusted off CEO of a month looking for spending cuts as much as possible. None the less this is what started the change in how the toy industry specifically the way the toys are manufactured and more importantly by who? The rest of the case will discuss the steps that Mattel took to improve work environment for workers in these overseas factories. I will also attempt to answer all three points over the remainder of this paper;
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