Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Market Building vs. Minimizing
What would the world's most prominent and popular shoe company do to increase it's profits? Well, NIKE employs small Chinese children for little to no pay, who work in sweat shops in over packed factories, where you can never seem to escape the toxic fumes of melting plastic. This is a great example of a cost minimizing strategy. A company outsources and cheats its way around the American system so it doesn't have to pay as many taxes or pay minimum wage to it's employees. A company like GMC on the other hand, conducts it's business in America, pays it's employees at least minimum wage and does not outsource or build factories in other countries to avoid taxes. That is market building, when a company benefits the overall market, instead of finding ways to make the most money, which usually violates human rights. This is not to say that market building companies don't try to make as much profit as they can, but they at least follow those little things called human securities.
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I liked the vivid description you used to describe the conditions nike puts its workers through. I will keep that in mind next time i go to buy sports gear. I say this because I believe that rather then just blame the big corporations, we should buy from the ones who promote human rights and try to avoid the ones who do what niki does. This way we as the public, rather then leaving it up to governments and other big NGOs, pressure these corporations to promote human rights.
ReplyDeleteVery strong points Sean. I like how you used specific examples of companies that do either the "right" or "wrong" things in terms of outsourcing and whatnot. I also really like you, you should give me a call sometime :P
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