Business Ethics and Stakeholder Management

We will be reviewing articles that cover the concept of stakeholder management. Stakeholders are important to consider in significant business related decisions. This is because organizational decisions – especially substantial decisions involving significant resource allocations/re-allocations – tend to impact various stakeholder groups as you will be reminded in your reading. These stakeholders may have the power to impact the organization’s success.

Assignment Instructions:

In this assignment you will be asked to apply stakeholder management theory to the following scenario:

A public corporation of 980 employees manufactures a popular brand of garments (mostly jeans) that are primarily made and sold in America nation-wide. It has a large contingent of employees in several small rural communities in the Eastern US and is the primary employer in all of those communities. Two of its 5 shops are unionized, but the union and management have a good working relationship. The company has traditionally marketed its clothing line as “Made in the USA” and attracted a bit of a “cult like” following as a result, but an outside consulting firm has suggested that significantly greater profits are possible if a different strategy is employed. The corporation is subsequently considering whether to off-shore its manufacturing facilities to a poor nation to save money on labor. It would also discretely discontinue its “Made in the USA” marketing ads and hopefully ride the wave of its previous marketing campaigns for a while. It is estimated that total cost per unit of production will be decreased by one third which equates to tens of millions of dollars.

Please write a 2-3 page paper in which you respond to the following:

1. Provide a paragraph summarizing the concept of stakeholder management based on your readings.
2. How do you think the following stakeholder groups in the above scenario will be impacted?

• Employees/unions
• Communities
• Stockholders

1. What would you recommend the employer described above should do?

Assignment Expectations

Your 2-3 (or more) page paper should be double-spaced and in 12-point type.

Your paper should have a separate cover page and a separate reference page. Make sure you cite your sources.

Use APA style.

Required reading:

Terris, D. (2013). Ethics at work: Creating virtue at an American corporation. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press. Retrieved from the Trident Online Library (ProQuest Ebook Central). Read pages 1-48.

Howitt, M., & McManus, J. (2012). Stakeholder management: An instrument for decision making. Management Services, 56(3), 29-34. Retrieved from Trident Online Library (ProQuest).

Harrison, J. S., & Wicks, A. C. (2013). Stakeholder theory, value, and firm performance. Business Ethics Quarterly, 23(1), 97-124. Retrieved from Trident Online Library.

Emerson, W. M., Alves, H., & Raposo, M. (2011). Stakeholder theory: Issues to resolve. Management Decision, 49(2), 226-252.

Stieb, J. A. (2009). Assessing Freeman’s stakeholder theory. Journal of Business Ethics, 87(3), 401-414.

Vlachos, P. A., Panagopoulos, N. G., & Rapp, A. A. (2013). Feeling good by doing good: Employee CSR-induced attributions, job satisfaction, and the role of charismatic leadership. Journal of Business Ethics, 118(3), 577-588.

Schweitzer, M. E., & Gibson, D. E. (2008). Fairness, feelings, and ethical decision-making: Consequences of violating community standards of fairness. Journal of Business Ethics, 77(3), 287.