Business Ethics and Stakeholder Management
In this assignment you will be asked to apply stakeholder management theory to the following scenario:
A public corporation of 980 employees manufactures a popular brand of garments (mostly jeans) that are primarily made and sold in America nation-wide. It has a large contingent of employees in several small rural communities in the Eastern US and is the primary employer in all of those communities. Two of its 5 shops are unionized, but the union and management have a good working relationship. The company has traditionally marketed its clothing line as “Made in the USA” and attracted a bit of a “cult like” following as a result, but an outside consulting firm has suggested that significantly greater profits are possible if a different strategy is employed. The corporation is subsequently considering whether to off-shore its manufacturing facilities to a poor nation to save money on labor. It would also discretely discontinue its “Made in the USA” marketing ads, and hopefully ride the wave of its previous marketing campaigns for a while. It is estimated that total cost per unit of production will be decreased by one third, which equates to tens of millions of dollars.
Write a 2-page paper in which you respond to the following:
-Provide a paragraph summarizing the concept of stakeholder management based on your readings.
-How do you think the following stakeholder groups in the above scenario will be impacted?
- Employees/unions
- Communities
- Stockholders
-What would you recommend the employer described above should do?
