Analysis of “Moral Minimums for Multinationals” by Thomas Donaldson Essay

In righteous Minimums for Multinationals Thomas Donaldson addressed an issue, which truly much escapes attention of moral philosophers. The hold deals with a rather special ethical aspect of internationalistic business transaction relations between people of various cultures inside international corporations. This job appears to be of paramount importance for the author, providing data about expansion of corporations devised for colonizing the prospective. Manufacturers from India, managers from USA, experts from Japan, employees from the Philippines and directors from Germany they argon all be arers of quite polar cultural and ethical traditions, which pauperization to be submitd inside an international firm.The problem becomes more than obscure deeming existence of universal standards for business and business grapple, which are most often based on the set of Western civilization. Should managers always insist on the same standards of stomach for all, or should t hey verify their trains considering particular traditions? In moorage the code of conduct of a fraternity creates more severe limitations of demeanour than the law and customs of the agricultural in which the ac order acts, should this code of conduct prevail? Thomas Donaldson attempts to answer this and other questions in his work.Donaldson starts from assertion, that although the multinational corporations are non a wholly new phenomenon, their history in a modern chthonicstanding starts after World War II, when the growing demand of products, new transport facilities, differences in economic and financial situations in distinguishable countries resulted in internationalization of business.Consequently, standards of those companies started to expand. And the multinational corporations sayingd conflict between their plate work outs and practices in other countries, especially concerning labor conditions, working hours, age of employees, sums of utilitys and other issu es. Other matters are related to distribution of their products and standards of quality for such(prenominal) products for example, can a corporation sell pharmaceuticals which do not control to the standards of their home country in other countries, where there are not such standards?Donaldson introduces several universal suppositions for solving those problems. He starts with a concept of human right. Rights establish minimum levels of morally acceptable behavior existence a kind of bottom line for the corporations, which can not be crossed, a minimum pit of responsibilities for a corporation. Those responsibilities of the corporation are at the same time rights of its employees, trade partners and all those individuals which are influenced by the attach tos activities.However, there is a problem of control. Who should monitor the observation of those rights and duties the federation itself or its home country, or a country which is influenced by the companys activities? An d where can such minimum standards be found at all. Some response is given by universal human rights instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the UN Charter. However, those instruments accept very little of welfare rights, which are of paramount importance for international corporations. Donaldson criticizes the traditionalistic distinction between positive and ostracize rights, asserting, that often observation of negative rights requires states and individuals to act positively and vice versa.For example, preservation of right to life office also necessity to create sufficient working and environmental conditions. So what rights related to international corporations should be endorsed on international level? Donaldson proposes the followers criteria for definition of such rights 1) the right must protect something of very long importance 2) the right must be subject to substantial and repeated threats and 3) the obligations or burdens imposed by the r ight must satisfy a fairness-affordability audition.For Donaldson there are several rights that correspond these criteria 1) the right to license of physical movement 2) the right to ownership of property 3) the right to liberty from torture 4) the right to a fair trial 5) the right to nondiscriminatory intercession (e.g., freedom from discrimination on the basis of such characteristics as work or sex) 6) the right to physical security measure 7) the right to freedom of actors line and association 8) the right to minimal education 9) the right to political date and 10) the right to subsistence. For Donaldson this is a minimal list, which can be extended. He notices, that the international companies are able to observe, or at least pretend that they are observing most of the mentioned rights, but the situation is much more outstanding in cases when companies deprive people from opportunities to enjoy their rights. Thats where we once more face the problem of monitoring. Whic h of the rights should be guaranteed by the corporations and which by the governments?Here Donaldson states, that a corporation is not an institution which is designed to observe human rights, because its aim is only profit-making. They are undemocratic institutions by the nature. They strive to maximise their income and actually dont care of anyones rights. Their minimal obligations under Donaldson are related to avoidance of deprivation of others of their rights. For example, the right of physical security includes the companys obligation to physically protect its workers. In turn the right for political participation for the corporations is limited by their transaction to respect democratic institutions in other countries.Donaldson proposes to develop test, which would demonstrate whether the actions of the company deprive anyone of his or her rights or not. If the actions of the company would finally result in violations of anyones crucial rights, they should be morally inacce ptable, whether they are formally just or not. For Donaldson nothing less than a general moral speculation working in tandem with an analysis of the foundations of corporate existence is necessitateful. Donaldson introduces two types of ethical conflicts for multinational corporations. In the type A conflicts, the conduct of a company would contradict the legal and ethical norms of a country where the company holds business, and in the type B conflicts, the conduct of a company contradicts the laws of its home country.In order to reconcile the aims of the company to generate profit and obligation to act ethically, Donaldson supposes, that in case a particular practice does not infract considerable human rights and it is impossible to carry on business without such slightly unethical practice, a company whitethorn sometimes accept such practice (for example to bribe the officials, if this is a condition for further legal operations). Further development of ethical test would, un der Donaldson, help to create ethical standards for multinational corporations in the changing global business environment.Donaldsons article leaves a controversial printing of incompleteness. It looks rather like a draft of an article, but not an article itself. The author does not propose any single problem or thesis, or his problem is unreasonably broad for such a small(a) piece of text. At the beginning Donaldson speaks of the moral problems of interaction between bearers of different cultural traditions, but later he does not develop the idea, turn of events to ethical problems, which are actually typical for any business not only international one.Any company seeks to improve its performance at all costs. Any company is willing to have more currency and less responsibility. Any company has to face a moral prize between ethical and legal conduct and temptation to slightly violate accepted norms. The company does not need to be international to face this, therefore, the name and the thesis of Donaldsons article are hardly related to its content.Talking of employment standards, which can be really interesting when canvass ethical matters connected to international business, we should notice, that they are not limited solely to international human rights instruments, as Donaldson asserts. Acts of the United Nations (especially of Economic and Social Council) as well as acts of world-wide Labor Organization do include numerous requirements and recommendations of both legal and ethical nature. It would be wise to consider them when talking of ethical moments in international business. On the other founder Donaldson does not consider numerous business codes of conduct, which do include a number of ethical provisions. So, Donaldsons article is rather a set of ideas and reasoning about some situations, than a systematic study of multinational business ethics.So, do we need multinational corporations to behave ethically? Obviously, yes. Do we need to de velop any new ethical standards? Yes, but we need to be aware of those, which already exist. The situation is not so dramatic, as Donaldson presents. Ethical norms already exist, we just need to correctly apply them and reconcile moral requirements in various countries. Considering that most of the paramount ethical values are somehow reflected in the international law, or recognized universally, this problem appears to be not so complicated. Here it is possible to speak of globalization of ethical imperatives, which is a part of globalization processes as a whole. International business act both as agents and objects of such globalization, which is already inconvertible.