Moral Project Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Moral Project - Essay Example In the similar manner, ethical practices are also important for a company. From the perspective of an organization, ethics is concerned about the judging what is right and wrong. The decision making process of a company is also greatly influenced by its ethical guidelines and culture. Nevertheless, ethical practise help companies to attract new customers, satisfy employees, and attract investors for making investments in the company. On the other hand, unethical behavior may damage the reputation of a company and will hardly appeal to stakeholders. As a result of that the profit levels of the company may also decline (Tillotts, 2011). This study aim to shed light on the moral challenges or ethical dilemmas faced by Monsanto and evaluates the viability of the decisions made by them to deal with the prevailing scenario. It has been observed that the company has been experiencing ethical issues for a long period of time mostly due to its product portfolio, business models and the leader ship styles. Monsanto Company is a multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation based in US. The company is currently headquartered at Creve Coeur, Missouri. It was founded in the year 1901 by John Francis Queeny. The company is known as the foremost producer of genetically engineered (GE) seeds. However, during its early days, the company was also known as one of the leading producers of plastics which include synthetic fibers and polystyrene. Some of the best selling products of the company are herbicides, pesticides, and crop seeds. The company has earlier produced a number of controversial products such as Agent Orange, PCBs, DDT, and recombinant bovine somatotropin (Yahoo Finance, 2013). With its strong research and development (R&D), and engineering department Monsanto has been able to achieve several acclamations. It is also the first company to have produced light emitting diodes or commonly known as LEDs. The current employee strength of the company is 21,000 (Monsa nto, 2013). As of the financial year end 2011, the net revenue of the company was US$ 11.822 billion and operating income of Increase US$ 2.502 billion. The figure clearly portrays the stable financial position of the company. Despite of its strong financial position and well developed market, there are several allegations against the company in terms of its unethical leadership. In addition, ethical questions were also raised against the company because of their unscrupulous products. For example, the model of the company pertaining to seed patenting was also criticized and was regarded as biopiracy and moreover it was also a threat of the biodiversity. It has been observed that the activities of the company are unethical and devious at any angle. This is because of the company’s nature to control every thin they are involved into. For example, they strongly administer the production system, the distribution channel as well as the activities of the employee. Up till this pra ctise, there is no scope of raising issue against the company pertaining to ethical guidelines. However, the ethical issues come up when the company tries to control even the consumption pattern of their products. This becomes more evident when the farmers were deceived while making contracts with the company. This forced the farmers to but seeds from the company at a higher