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Ethics Case

1) The product manager visits a potential Thai toy manufacturer and is able to negotiate a deal that is a third of the current cost while maintaining quality. 2) During a tour, the manager discovers toys are assembled in workers' homes, including by children aged 5-14, and delivered to the company weekly. 3) While the practice is common locally, on the flight home the manager wonders about the impact on the children workers' development.

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Subham Bisht
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203 views2 pages

Ethics Case

1) The product manager visits a potential Thai toy manufacturer and is able to negotiate a deal that is a third of the current cost while maintaining quality. 2) During a tour, the manager discovers toys are assembled in workers' homes, including by children aged 5-14, and delivered to the company weekly. 3) While the practice is common locally, on the flight home the manager wonders about the impact on the children workers' development.

Uploaded by

Subham Bisht
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Producing toys- child’s play?

You are the product manager of a confectionery company that includes small plastic toys with its
chocolate sweets. Having met the potential Thai manufacturer of these toys at a trade fair in Europe,
you now visit the company in the north eastern part of Thailand to finalize a two year supply contract.
Arriving there and talking to the sales manager you are able to arrange a deal which supplies you with
the toys at a third of the cost currently charged by your Portuguese supplier, but with equivalent quality
and supply arrangements.

In order to check the reliability of the manufacturing process you ask the manager to show you around
the place. You are surprised to find out that there is no real workshop on the premises. Rather the
production process is organized such that at 6 am, about 30 men line up at the company’s gate, load
large boxes with toy components on their little carts or motor scooters and take the material to their
homes.

Your prospective supplier then takes you to one of these places where you see a large family, sitting in a
garage like barn assembling the toys. Not only the mother and father doing the job, but also the couple’s
six children, aged 5 to 14, who are working busily- and from what you see, very cheerfully –together
with the parents, while the grandmother is looking after the food in an adjacent room. In the evening, at
around 8 pm, the day’s work is done; the assembled toys are stored back in the boxes and taken to the
workshop of the company where the men receive their payment for the finished goods. At the end of
the week the toys are shipped to the customers in the Europe.

As you have never come across such a pattern of manufacturing , your Thai partner explains to you that
this is a very common and well established practice in this part of the country, and one which
guarantees a good level of quality. Satisfied , you tell the Thai manager that you will conclude the
paperwork once you get back home, and you leave the company offices happy in the knowledge of the
cost savings you’re going to make, and quietly confident that it will result in a healthy bonus for you at
the end of the year.

On your way back , while buying some souvenirs for your five and seven year old nieces at the airport,
you suddenly start wondering if you would like to see them growing up in the same way as the child
workers that you have just employed to make your company’s toys.

Questions.

● Reading a case and putting yourself in the role of the product manager, what would your
immediate gut reaction be?
● Based on your spontaneous immediate decision, can you set out the reasons for your choice?
Also, can you relate those reasons back to some underlying values or principles that are
obviously important to you?

Reference: Crane, A and Matten, D (2010). Business Ethics. 8th ed. US: Oxford University
Press. 92.

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