Program Name & Code:

Bachelor of International Business

Session:

MAY 2016

Subject Name/Code:

International Trade Law

Assignment Title:

Individual Assignment

Name/ID:

Seng Fook Loong (I14005804)

Lecture Name:

Ms. San Darwynn

Date Line:

June 27th, 2016.

Video 1
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJI1jNRO3kQ
Introduction
Ethics is defined as a moral conduct code that characterizes a person or group behaviour in
making a decision. The decision made between an individual with another are often different.
In a business workplace, business ethics are widely been used and is defined as a more
professional ethics that inspect ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that give rise
in a business environment. In this report, two videos are evaluated within the aspect of
business ethics.
Body
In today business world, most of the people conducts an unethical behaviour for good sake of
themselves. It is often engaged in middle enterprises and such behaviours are crucial as it
may affects in sustaining the company growth. Throughout the video, several sub scenes are
been taken as an example of unethical behaviour in a workplace.
Firstly, the video portrays about how some workers violate the use of their break room. The
rules are stated clearly where none should use the break room for more than 30 minutes and
everyone who are inside the break room should low down their voice if they have any
conversation. However, it clearly shows that none of them follow the rules, instead violating
them. A worker should never slack off by sleeping in the break room as it is a bad influence
to the organization even though one who possesses a high post position. Moreover, it will
also affects a worker productivity tremendously which leads to a slow growth for a company.
Next, workers should never have a loud conversation in a breakdown as it will distract the
others who are still working. Having a loud and noisy conversation may also leak up some
inappropriate information to others who eavesdropping and will also influence others to take
advantage in slacking off their work due to distraction.

Secondly, the video portrays a worker who making personal in a company. Such behaviour
may be appropriate if it is an urgent issue. However, in the video, the worker is still on his
personal call even though a customer or client approached him. The worker made the
customer or client to wait for a long period of time. Such unethical behaviour may causes
havoc to the company as the company tends to lose big clients or customers if such behaviour
prolonged. Moreover, it will also influence others to think that making personal call is
feasible which would then reduce the company productivity dramatically.
Thirdly, the video then portrays a worker who misuse the company credit cards for her own
goodwill. Such behaviours are often regards as a heavy act of criminal activity and the
worker may be jailed for it. However, in this video, the manager itself who gave the
permission to her subordinates to purchase supplies by entrusting the subordinates with the
use of company credit card. This would then lead to a blame to the manager rather than the
workers when it comes to a budget meeting. This behaviour will affects not only the worker
but also the manager itself as it will affects the company overall. Therefore, a worker that
work as clerk should never be permitted in handling a company credit card (unless he or she
is truly trustworthy) and the manager him or herself should manage the purchasing activity by
themselves in order to avoid any problems that will lead to an ethical dilemma.
Fourthly, the video then portrays a worker stealing other workers property. This is the main
concern in a business workplace. Stealing is a crime which will lead to jailing if anyone
pursue such matter with evidence. Such unethical behaviour often occur due to several
reasons. First, the worker might be interested in the items or accessories another person has
which leads to their motive in stealing it. Secondly, a worker who often boast about their
luxury lifestyle are often the target for the others. Lastly, the high offer from other
competitors for intellectual property information would also lead to a theft in a business
workplace. Therefore, to avoid such circumstances, a company should always play their role
in maintaining and retaining good relationship with all their employees and avoid any
conflicts that will lead to misunderstanding.
Lastly, the video then portray workers bullying another subordinate by making prank on him.
This unethical behaviour often leads to a higher level stress faced by most of the workers.
Some workers are often facing stress in their workplace and such bullying will just add more
dead weight to that person. Moreover, it also becomes a distraction or causes frustration even
though it is just a small prank. This would then decreases the workers productivity as well as
3

motivation to work harder. They will think that they are just a laughing stock or clown in
their workplace which contributes nothing more than just a pleasure. The workers who is
being a victim of bullying would then tend to conducts other unethical behaviour in the
workplace which would then lead to a chaos in the business environment. Therefore, such
situation should be handled with care by providing them flexible working hours or even
conducting a business trip to get along together.
Conclusion
In conclusion, unethical behaviour are often caused by internal and external environment
itself. A company can avoid such unethical behaviour by ensuring a strict rules or conducting
events that could bond the workers together and allows them to know each other better.
Companies can also train their workers by conducting a test on them to seek out and teaches
them what other ethical dilemma can occur in a business workplace. In addition, throughout
the video, theory that can be applied is non-consequentialist theory. This is apply as the
workers in the video hold that actions are intrinsically good or bad by themselves and the
rightness or wrongness are ignored as it does not depend on the consequences.

Video 2
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdkYieDuVvY
Introduction
Profitability, a word that often being the biggest concern to all businesses regardless of small,
medium or big companies. Profitability is indeed the most imperative ingredients in a
business. However, corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays the most essential role as it
leads a company to achieve profitability. CSR is defined as a concept where companies take
social and environment concerns in their business operations. Most businesses often relies
only on achieving maximum profit without taking the consideration of social welfare. Such
behaviour may not help a company to build its image as well as generating more sales and
revenues. Throughout this video, it illustrates how corporate social responsibility play its role
in business ethics.
Body
The video describes about how companies should always aim to achieve sustainability.
Sustainability is when companies help society through their business as a main goal, they will
then manage to achieve success. Companies can apply such ethics by producing goods and
services to serve the needs of the society. For instance, Ben and Jerry often donates a sum of
money to the charities for each products they sold. Such ethics manage to build up their
business image and perhaps, generating larger revenues in the long run. Therefore, company
that apply CSR in their business operations are often tend to be more successful. Several
more examples are Mac Donald where they ensures green environment and provides job to
handicap people, StarBucks, where they provides clean water to people who normally doesnt
have access to it and Google, where they implements Google Green to help use resources
efficiently and support renewable power. All this company have achieve a huge success by
running CSR in their business operations. It clearly shows that, caring for the society welfare
is vital in order to generates more revenue compare to just focusing on making profit and
ignores the needs of society.

In addition, throughout this video, it also stated that ethics

of

multi-enterprises

includes

activities that are ethically upright. It is basic knowledge that majorities of the company
5

activities are involves in may not seem to meet the required moral standards. This is due to
most of the businesses often focus on profiteering rather than any other thing. Business ethics
is an upcoming issue mainly because of the sheer number of person involved. The actions of
few people may seem to be safe on small scale, but at the larger scale, such actions can be
obliterating. A case of such circumstances that may viewed as exploitative or unethical is the
termination of workers to ensure that the corporation saves some money and maintain high
profit margin. This would then causes people to suffer and may leads to calamity in the
spreading of words of negativity to others. Throughout my opinion, I am very sure that multicorporations could definitely live with the loss incurred rather than terminating their worker
services as such actions is considered as unethical.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) also makes it crystal clear where it is unethical for a
company to be making profits at the expense of the environment and other aspects of human
life. Moreover, CSR also ensures a company to find better way in handling their waste
disposal. For instance, in India, a company called Jamshedpur, manage to innovate its waste
disposal of plastic into a railway road that covers up to 22 roads in India. Moving on, CSR
should also involves in considering the most imperative ingredients in its concept, which is
education. Education is widely spread, but chances for learning continue to elude many.
Many children from Ethiopia, Kenya and Bangladesh fail to get their education. Therefore,
companies should play their roles in aiding them by setting up schools, funding educational
programs and etc. Education can also be encourage by taking interns in order to provides
them opportunities to learn some skills or talents of the job.
However, throughout my ideas about CSR is that, it is no longer defined by how much profits
or revenues a company adds to philanthropy, but by its overall involvement in activities that
help to enhance and improve quality lives of people. CSR has come up as a critical topic in
the worldwide business group and is dynamically turning into a standard movement. CSR is
vital as it may affects the activities of the private sector have on the workforce, customers,
general public, climax, investors, shareholders and government. It is also becoming
progressively clear that organizations can contribute to their individual wealth and to overall
community wealth by taking into account the effect they have on the entire globe when
making decisions. Moreover, the theory that can be clearly be applied to such ethics is
Utilitarianism Theory. CSR plays such a theory because it concerns on the social welfare by
outsourcing their profits to ensure happiness to the public. In contrast, they manage to get
good feedbacks from public as well as building good company image.
6

Conclusion
To encapsulate, CSR plays an imperative element for any business corporations. It has been
demonstrated that there are various areas in which an organization may choose to focus its
CSR. The first area is the company achieving sustainability via CSR which will aid them in
achieving success. The second area is how multi-enterprises utilizes their internal ethical
decision making to reap success. The third area is how CSR helps to comply with
environment problems that are currently being an issue in the world. The final area is how
CSR play its role in aiding education for people throughout the world. Therefore, CSR is a
common business ethics where it is not an option but an obligation for all businesses to incur
in their workplace and ensures a high ethical standard.

References
Darwin.eeb.uconn.edu, (2015). Consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist theories ofethics.
[online]

Available

at:

http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/eeb310/lecture-notes/value-

ethics/node3.html [Accessed 5 Oct. 2015].

Utilitarianism.com,

(2015).

Utilitarianism.

[online]

http://www.utilitarianism.com/utilitarianism.html [Accessed 5 Oct. 2015].

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJI1jNRO3kQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdkYieDuVvY

Available

at: