Quote:
Originally Posted by GhettoDogAllStars
You're smarter than that, but I'll spell it out for you, since you asked.
Corporate structure:
Shareholders -> Executive Officers -> Employees
Shareholders want return on investment, but are usually not involved in the everyday activities and/or decisions of the business. They usually only care about the bottom line.
If the executive officers of a corporation are faced with a moral dilemma, and chose the morally right thing to do but profits suffer, the shareholders will elect new officers. If the executive officers want to keep their jobs, they will almost always be forced to choose profits over ethics. See the Ford Pinto as a case study.
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All right -- you answered none of my questions, but I'll still play along.
The Ford Pinto is a good example, but it proves my point more than it does yours. The Pinto is just one of the many examples of American cars that signified the decline in quality of the Big Three. As a result, they started losing out to better cars made by Toyota, Honda, and (at the time) Datsun. The American car companies paid the price for trying to cut corners and deliver an inferior product. So for them, choosing "profits over ethics" ultimately wound up losing them profits.
The free market worked like a charm; make a better product at a better price, and in the end, the consumers benefit.
The question is, what do you consider "immoral" in a business sense? And that goes back to the questions that you neglected to answer. I look forward to your response.