Why Is Boycotting Wrong

Elaine Chen
Business Ethics Midterm paper
3/10/2014
Boycotting A successful business does not live in isolation. Instead, it merges itself into the community itself and causes the community to either succeed or fail. It has a social responsibility to not only the community it is based in, but also anyone who is directly or indirectly by the company’s actions. However, in business, there are laws that might contradict what is believed to be morally correct, which can lead to conflicts. What can a company do if it is targeted by boycotting simply because the company’s country of origin? In the article, “Battling Boycotts”, it mentions two major companies that have been subjected with boycotting, McDonald’s and Procter &Gamble
Boycotting are attempts to persuade other people to have nothing do with some particular company either in agreeing not to purchase the firm’s products or to socially discriminate the company. As individuals, boycotting is okay and a device that is used by people who wish to take action against those who engage in activities that people believe to be immoral. Blacklisting is also a form of boycotting and is by law, legal to do. However, secondary boycotts are outlawed under our current labor laws and are unfair to the business. Throughout history, laws were created to help prevent secondary boycotting from occur. It would be unfair to the business and obstruct the business from selling their product. One of the laws created to help regulate it was Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1931. The law was passed to make it legal for employers to fire union organizers among their employees. It was to help regulate union activity from occurring in the first place. Without unions, it would be harder for the people to come together to prevent people from buying from a certain
When Arab started boycotting trade with Israel and trade with companies that traded with Israel, U.S made laws to prevent U.S companies from following and it also prohibits refusing to employ U.S citizens because of their nationality, race or religion. To enforce that it won’t happen again, two similar laws were created to help prevent secondary boycotting like the one Arabian countries did to Iranian companies. The two laws were Federal Taft-Hartley Act and the Landrum-Griffin Act. The Taft-Hartley Act targeted unions and prohibited them from any activity that might harm other employees and employers. It prevented unions from taking direct actions against suppliers and customers of any company. The second law was Landrum-Griffin Act. This law also prevented secondary boycotts by enhancing the Taft-Hartley Act. It required unions to publically disclose their financial records. These laws created were to prevent people from boycotting companies based on conflicts from other countries and at the same time also contradict the rights of customers to fight for what they believed in just to allow companies to create profit. In an ethical perspective, as consumers, if something is produce or sold in an unethical way, a type of boycotting is initiated and attempt to persuade friends and family to not buy the product you deemed to be unethical. Boycotting is a deontological