Business Ethics Essay
Introduction
The essay in hand describes, explains and discusses an ethical problem which the company Google has to face due to its expansion in China. It is explicitly focused on the period from January 12th to March 19th, 2010. Accordingly, things that happened after this date could have not been taken into account.
In a first step, the ethical problem of the company will be explained. After discussing in how far companies like Google do have social and moral responsibilities at all, three different ethical theories will be applied on the discussed case in order to evaluate the ethical conflict from different viewpoints. Finally, a recommendation, based on
Google’s notion of ethics, will be given.
Google’s ethical problem in China
On January 24th 2006 Google unveiled its first search engine inside China and granted to play by government rules by censoring results of political sensitive queries, for example about Taiwanese independence, the Tiananmen Square massacres and democracy (Elgin, 2006; Kopytoff, 2006). This was also the time since when Google found itself in an ethical dilemma, stuck between its idealistic corporate philosophy of doing no “evil” and its business objectives of expanding in China (Kopytoff, 2006), which is by far the biggest and fastest growing market for internet technology, already having about 384 million Internet users today (Cho et al., 2010). As Google’s founders
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as its chief executive Eric Schmidt, have said explicitly and repeatedly in the past, that their biggest motivation is not to maximise profits but to improve the world (The Economist, 2007), its corporate governance was criticised as being hypocritical by many sides, especially by users and human‐rights
The essay in hand describes, explains and discusses an ethical problem which the company Google has to face due to its expansion in China. It is explicitly focused on the period from January 12th to March 19th, 2010. Accordingly, things that happened after this date could have not been taken into account.
In a first step, the ethical problem of the company will be explained. After discussing in how far companies like Google do have social and moral responsibilities at all, three different ethical theories will be applied on the discussed case in order to evaluate the ethical conflict from different viewpoints. Finally, a recommendation, based on
Google’s notion of ethics, will be given.
Google’s ethical problem in China
On January 24th 2006 Google unveiled its first search engine inside China and granted to play by government rules by censoring results of political sensitive queries, for example about Taiwanese independence, the Tiananmen Square massacres and democracy (Elgin, 2006; Kopytoff, 2006). This was also the time since when Google found itself in an ethical dilemma, stuck between its idealistic corporate philosophy of doing no “evil” and its business objectives of expanding in China (Kopytoff, 2006), which is by far the biggest and fastest growing market for internet technology, already having about 384 million Internet users today (Cho et al., 2010). As Google’s founders
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as its chief executive Eric Schmidt, have said explicitly and repeatedly in the past, that their biggest motivation is not to maximise profits but to improve the world (The Economist, 2007), its corporate governance was criticised as being hypocritical by many sides, especially by users and human‐rights
Bibliography: Cho, J., McCord, M. and Annells, J. (2010) “Google China Withdrawal May Be Permanent, Ex‐ Executive Says”, Businessweek, 18th March. Available at: Chryssides, G.D. and Kaler, J.H. (1993) An Introduction to Business Ethics, Hampshire: Cengage Learning EMEA Einhorn, B. (2010) “In China, Google Declares War on Censorship”, Businessweek, 13th January. Available at: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jan2010/gb20100113_124533.htm Elgin, B. (2006) “Google 's Dicey Dance in China”, Businessweek, 25th January. Available at: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060125_463123.htm Fletcher, O. (2010) “Google 's China ad partners wait in 'incomparable pain '”, Businesweek, Hendry, J. (2004) Between Enterprise and Ethics, New York: Oxford University Press Inc. Kapten, M. and Wempe, J. (2002) The Balanced Company, New York: Oxford University Press Inc. Kopytoff, V. (2006) “Lofty ideals meet reality / Ethical debate swirls around Google 's chief‐executive‐google‐representatives Lakshmanan, I.A.R. (2010) “U.S. Won’t Tell Google What to Do in China Spat, Clinton Says”, Unknown author (2010) “Flowers for a funeral”, The Economist, 14th January. Available at: http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15270952 Unknown author (2007) “Inside the Googleplex”, The Economist, 30th August. Available at: http://www.economist.com/business‐finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_JSTJGTD