ToyCo’S Case
The company has a role towards the customers; to provide quality and safe products (Rice University, n.d). It is well known that lead causes harm to a child’s health, and selling of toys with lead paint would increase children’s exposure to it (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d). It is unethical for a company to sell toys that have a lead component in them, and that’s why the USA bans such toys. Selling toys to countries with no such rules does not make it ethical (Rice University, n.d). Therefore, I would not advise the company to take the business opportunity. Instead, I would suggest that the company returned the products to the manufacturers. There are a few costs that the company would incur, but they cannot compare to the costs that the company would incur if it was sued for making many children ill in South Africa. This is because the stakeholders cannot be sued because they were not involved in the selling of the toys, but the company would be held 100% accountable for child poisoning. Moreover, the company must incur when disposing or returning the toys to suppliers, but the effects of the lawsuit may damage the company’s reputation and leave it bankrupt. The company has to evaluate the long term effect of selling these toys and not just the short term effect.
References
Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d). Lead Hazard in some holiday Toys and Toy Jewelry. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/features/leadintoys/index.html
Rice University. (n.d). Corporate social responsibility (CSR). Business Ethics. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/businessethicsopenstax/chapter/corporate-social-responsibility