Question 1:
I consider the Nike Corporation to be an amoral employer because of the financial incentives to make the cheapest product in a capitalistic business culture. In America, the issue of moral and immoral conduct in the business world is often sidelined in favor of an amoral position on the necessity of earning the greatest profits through the lowest costs cutting measures in terms of employment. The issue of Nike sweatshops as an immoral factor in the show industry is known by executive and managers, yet they also understand the necessity of profitability and low cost work to continually grow the company. In the case of Stephen Knight, (the owner of Nike), it is important to understand the temptation of the profit …show more content…
For instance, Cadbury’s article on the moral principles of providing a code of ethics for employee conduct and operations in the Cadbury Corporation: “We said it was important that all employees should know what standards of conduct were expected of them” (Cadbury, 2003, p.13). of course, many business leaders, such as the Sir Adrian Cadbury, know the moral and immoral codes of employer conduct, just as Phil Knight is aware of the immoral and moral codes of employee ethics that he conduct in third world labor markets. Although Phil Knight is clearly immoral in his treatment of workers, he takes an amoral stance through the “market competition” ideology as a reality in surviving as a major transnational corporation. This is the amoral stance on the use of exploited third world labor as a the cheapest “device to advance the amoral goals of commerce” (Goldman & Papson, 1998, p.86). In this manner, Mike’s lack of enforcement for moral ethics in terms of third world employment is not based on ignorance, but on the amoral philosophy of the necessity of low wages to maintain Nike’s dominance in the field of commerce. Certainly, many transnational corporations understand the immorality of hiring workers with unsustainable wages, poor healthcare, and abusive work hours, yet the driving force of profit is too irresistible for members of the elite capitalistic classes that own and mange corporations, such as Nike. In this manner, Nike is an amoral employer because the capitalistic system encourages exploitation as an economic system, which makes it the imperative of the corporation to seek the lowest wages to maintain that power in a highly competitive show