The Coca Cola Company Struggles with Ethical Issues Essay Essay Example

The Coca Cola Company Struggles with Ethical Issues Essay Essay Example The Coca Cola Company Struggles with Ethical Issues Essay Paper The Coca Cola Company Struggles with Ethical Issues Essay Paper 1 ) . What function does corporation repute drama within organisational public presentation and societal duty? Develop a list of factors or features that different stakeholders may utilize in measuring corporate repute. Are these factors consistent across stakeholders? Why or why non? Corporate repute plays a really built-in portion within organisational public presentation and societal duty. Either one important incident or several incidents can act upon the perceptual experience of a company’s image and repute held by its stakeholders and clients. This may hold a permanent consequence for many. many old ages. Coca-Cola’s ( Coke ) repute has been tarnished because of the legion allegations of unethical behaviour and deficiency of societal duty chiefly in the international market. In 2000. Coke failed to put in Fortune’s top 10 â€Å"America’s Most Admired Companies† . The undermentioned twelvemonth it vanished from the â€Å"100 Best Corporate Citizens† as honored by Business Ethics magazine ( p. 409 ) . Along with losing its good standing in the corporate universe. Coke has besides experienced some instability in its fiscal public presentation. While in the early portion of 2000 Coke maintained a sound balance sheet ( p. 416 ) . its growing proved to be a small more dead by 2009 with portions fluctuating between $ 59 and $ 37 per portion ( p. 410 ) . This slow growing was speculated as a consequence of the assorted allegations of unethical behaviour and illegal patterns. The increased turnover in direction and the going of cardinal investors ( p. 410 ) may besides hold contributed to the job. Until the company rebuilds its repute. Coke may go on to see dead growing. Assorted factors are involved when mensurating corporate repute. These factors are based on an individual’s degree of engagement. A customer’s primary concerns may include merchandise safety and quality. degree of client service. and the selling schemes used to actuate them to purchase. Customers may no longer esteem a company known to systematically maltreat its employees. fails to follow up on client service issues. or is involvedwith unethical selling patterns. A company’s intervention of its employees is observed at all degrees including degree of preparation. safety in the work topographic point. age favoritism. racial favoritism. sex favoritism. every bit good as rewards and benefits that are offered. Investors are chiefly concerned with a company’s repute. fiscal position. degree of profitableness. every bit good as its degree of societal duty and concern moralss. Whether the investor agrees or disagrees with the company’s concern patterns refering employees. clients. and stakeholders. it will impact the investor’s determination to ab initio put or stay invested in a company. 2 ) Assume you have merely become CEO at Coca Cola. Sketch the strategic stairss you would take to rectify the concerns emanating from the company’s board of managers. consumers. employees. and concern spouses ; authoritiess ; and the media. What elements of societal duty would you pull from in reacting to these stakeholder issues? The first measure would be to set up an ethics commission in each subdivision location. Based on the information given. it is ill-defined if the allegations of misconduct resulted from mundane concern patterns or if certain employees chose to ignore the company’s mission statement. Following. finishing a societal and moralss audit to develop a precedence list of actions to be action. The 3rd measure would be to end and prosecute any employee who cognizing violated Coke’s policies and end anyone who refuses or fails to honour company policies traveling frontward. Another measure includes uninterrupted developing on moralss and cultural consciousness preparation. This instruction will greatly better Coke’s place with the international market. And eventually. making a commission devoted to societal duty and find of new and advanced ways for Coke to come on in this country and turn out to the critics its degree of committedness towards societal duty. 3 ) What do you believe of Coca-Cola’s environmental enterprises? Are they merely window dressing. or does the company seem to be sincere in its attempts?As presented in this instance survey. it is apparent that Coke has made great paces in its attempts towards societal duty both internally and externally. While the company critics believe it has non done sufficiency and that the attempts made are a agencies of concealing the corruptness ( p. 416 ) . I partly agree with the critics. I am troubled with the deficiency of taking duty for any incorrect making. This leads me to believe Coke is concerned with covering up the corruptness alternatively of taking ownership of the errors made. Equally far as has Coke done plenty. I steadfastly believe the company is on the right path. The company has been accused of consuming and polluting the groundwater in India. In response. 320 rainwater-harvesting installations were built to regenerate and return all groundwater ( p. 414 ) . Recycling and climatic alteration are other enterprises Coca-Cola has embraced. The PlantBottle developed by Coca-Cola truly has a positive impact on the environment. Not merely is it partly made from plant-based stuff. it is to the full reclaimable and reduces the usage of unrenewable resources and C emanations ( p. 415 ) . However. I feel the company’s resources can be better spent other ways to cut down emanations. unrenewable resources. energy ingestion. etc. alternatively of establishing a vesture line made from recycled plastic bottles that finally will stop up in the landfills. Based on the information provided in the instance survey. I believe Coca-Cola is sincere in its attempt to broaden its societal duty. I besides feel that some of its determinations are non in the company’s or the environment’s best involvement. 4 ) . In what other ways does this instance relate to the constructs that we have learned in the chapters so far? The instance survey reveals allegations of corruptness. unethical behaviour. and deficiency of societal duty that have plagued Coca-Cola for the past two decennaries. This instance survey besides reveals some of the unethical selling tactics used by the company. The most unethical tactics were its deceptive advertisement that sodium carbonate was healthy for kids and that its Vitamin Water was besides healthy when in fact it contained high degrees of sugar ( p. 413 ) . The instance survey besides discusses happenings of accounting fraud by channel stuffing which resulted in increased grosss and basically inflated its fiscal statement net incomes ( p. 411 ) . The instance survey exposes misdemeanors of antimonopoly Torahs with the most noteworthy being Coca-Cola offering discounts and vouchers to cut down shelf infinite available to the competition ( p. 410 ) . Finally. th e instance survey uncovers several incidents of unethical employment patterns including unequal wage and racial favoritism.

An Investigation Of How Mood Affects Theory-Of-Mind Use In Pre-School Children The WritePass Journal

An Investigation Of How Mood Affects Theory-Of-Mind Use In Pre-School Children Background An Investigation Of How Mood Affects Theory-Of-Mind Use In Pre-School Children BackgroundProposed ResearchProcedure. Mood Induction. False-Belief Task. PredictionsReferences Related Background â€Å"Theory of mind† (ToM) is the ability to reason other people’s beliefs, intentions and desires (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985). Over the last two decades, there has been considerable developmental research into ToM using the â€Å"false-belief task† (e.g. Baron-Cohen et al., 1985, Wellman et al., 2001). The majority of research has established that ToM is present in young children and develops in a predictable sequence through childhood (Wellman Liu, 2004). For example, by three years of age, children can understand that two individuals can hold different beliefs (Wimmer Perner, 1983) and by age four, can understand that people can have â€Å"false-beliefs† contrary to reality (Wellman Liu, 2004). Recent research has even demonstrated that adults have difficulties with false-belief tasks (Birch Bloom, 2007). However, a recent paper by Converse et al (2008) examined the role of incidental mood on ToM. Grounded in the view that ToM requires effortful and deliberative processing (Kahneman, 2003), researchers found that when distinguishing between one’s own and other’s beliefs, participants were facilitated by sad moods compared to happy moods. This is because happiness is associated with heuristic processing whilst sadness is associated with systematic and deliberative processing (Converse et al., 2008). In their study, adult participants underwent a musical mood induction procedure (MMIP) and were randomly allocated to two conditions (â€Å"happy† and â€Å"sad†). Those in the former condition were asked to listen to a song from a pre-selected list of happy songs whilst participants in the latter condition were required to listen to a sad song. Following the mood induction, participants completed a false-belief task in which they read one of two versions of a sc enario and estimate a character’s behaviour. Whilst the character has the same knowledge in both versions, participants received different information. Researchers then measured low ToM use by observing whether participants had an increased reliance on their own private knowledge. The study is an important contribution to the current body of knowledge on ToM as the findings suggest that a) mood states do have important consequences for mental-state inferences and b) variability in ToM studies may be explained by mood. However, despite these contributions, the study solely focused on a sample of adults and failed to explore how mood affects ToM use in children. This is an important oversight given that the majority of developments in ToM have been based on studies with children, therefore, suggesting significant implications for research if mood is found to significantly impact children’s ToM judgments. Moreover, given children’s increased susceptibility to mood induction (De Haan Gunnar, 2009), mood may have even more potent effects on ToM in children. This current study will therefore examine the role of mood in affecting ToM use in children for the first time. It will attempt to bolster previous findings that mood does influence ToM and clarify the role of mood in influencing deliberative processing in ToM. In so doing, the study will replicate the original procedure, but with modifications to the mood induction and the false-belief task. In fact, a clear strength of this study is that the false-belief task was originally devised to be used with children and not adults (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985), making the task particularly suitable for use with children. In addition, previous research has supported the fact that mood induction procedures can effectively impact children’s positive and negative emotions (Brenner, 2000). Proposed Research There are modifications made to the experimental procedure. As mood induction requires participants to follow explicit instructions, changes to the MMIP will be implemented according to the study’s sample of pre-school children. For example, although researchers (e.g. Dalla Bella et al., 2001) have found that most 5 year olds can distinguish positive and negative valence in music, a MMIP may not be sufficient for invoking moods in children. Children will therefore undergo an additional mood induction. Moreover, in the original study, adult participants completed a pre- and post- induction self-report (Positive-and-Negative Affect Schedule; Watson Clark, 1994) to serve as a manipulation check. However, as a self-report is difficult to implement with young children, an alternative manipulation check is needed. There are also important ethical considerations associated with a MMIP in children. The experimenter will need to ensure that mood induction does not cause long-term effe cts, but is also not too short-lived to observe its effects. Method Participants 100 children aged 4-6 years old will be recruited from local schools through flyers and e-mail bulletins. Procedure. On the day of testing, each child will be guided to an individual room. To provide a replication of the Converse et al (2008) study, a 2 X 2 between-subjects experimental design will include a mood induction and false-belief task. Researchers will randomly allocate children to 2 conditions: â€Å"happy† and â€Å"sad† and undergo the mood induction. Both groups then complete the same false-belief task. The entire procedure takes a total of 40 minutes. Mood Induction. The mood induction scenario for each condition will make amendments to the MMIP in the Converse et al (2008) study. Each child will first be shown a sheet of paper with a series of â€Å"smiley faces† ranging from very sad to very happy, and asked to point to the image that best describes how they feel. This is the baseline affect manipulation check. Children will then be instructed to listen to a song played via speakers. Children in the happy condition will listen to two songs from the original list of songs in the Converse et al (2008) study and children in the sad condition will listen to two sad songs. In both conditions, children will be explicitly told â€Å"Now, I am going to play a   â€Å"happy† / â€Å"sad† song so please listen carefully to the song†. Children will then be presented with a model figure on a sheet of paper and asked to draw a replica of the figure on a plain sheet of A4 paper. In the happy condition, children will be presented with a smiling figure and in the sad condition, children will be asked to copy a sad figure. Following this, children will be presented with the sheet of faces and asked to point to the face which describes how they feel to provide a post-task rating of affect. A second manipulation check will be the size of their drawing as research has suggested that drawing size is associated with a child’s affect. Larger drawings indicative of positive affect and smaller drawings are indicative of negative affect (Forrest Thomas, 1991). False-Belief Task. The false-belief task is the classic â€Å"Sally-Anne task† (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985). Each child is seated at a table with two dolls. The experimenter tells the child that the dolls are named Anne and Sally and checks that the child has understood these names. Each doll is placed in front of a basket and square box. The experimenter then enacts a scene in which a marble is hidden in Sally’s basket to ‘hide’ the marble with Anne looking on. Sally then â€Å"leaves the room† and the marble is then re-hidden in the box. Sally returns and the experimenter prompts the child with three questions: ‘Where will Sally look for her marble?’ (â€Å"belief question†) ‘Where is the marble really?’ (â€Å"reality question†) ‘Where was the marble in the beginning?’ (â€Å"memory question†) Predictions There are a number of predictions for the current study. Firstly, it is expected that the findings of the original study will be replicated in the sample of pre-school children. That is, I expect that after controlling for age effects, children in the sad condition will score higher on the belief, reality and memory questions in the Sally-Anne task. This will be due to a greater deliberative processing associated with a sad mood. These findings will provide support for the idea that ToM requires deliberative processing and such processing is associated with sad moods rather than happy moods. Second, I expect that there will be a number of age differences in performance on the Sally-Anne task. I expect that younger children, due to their increased susceptibility to mood induction, will have a greatly diminished ToM on the Sally-Anne task due to the more pronounced impact of mood on their deliberative processing. However, it must be noted that it is possible that the results of the current study will not replicate the original study. This may be due to a number of factors. Firstly, it is possible that the mood induction procedures are not powerful enough to invoke happy and sad moods for children or they produce effects that are too short term to observe any effects in the false belief task. Second, it may be that the deliberative processing associated with sad moods and the heuristic processing associated with happy moods is not developed sufficiently in pre-school children, and is only salient in adulthood. If this is the case, this provides impetus for future research focused on testing the influence of mood on ToM in older children and adolescents. References Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A. M., Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a ‘‘theory of mind’’? Cognition, 21, 37–46. Birch, S. A. J., Bloom, P. (2007). The curse of knowledge in reasoning about false beliefs. Psychological Science, 18(5), 382–386. Brenner, E. (2000). Mood induction in children: Methodological implications. Review of General Psychology, 4, 264-283. Converse, B. A., Shuhong, L., Boaz, K., Epley, N. (2008). In the Mood To Get Over Yourself: Mood Affects Theory-of-Mind Use. Emotion, 8(5), 725-630. Dalla Bella, S., Peretz, I., Rousseau, L., Gosselin, N. (2001). A developmental study of the affective value of tempo and mode in music. Cognition, 80, B1-B10. de Haan, M., Gunnar, M.R. (2009). Handbook of Developmental Social Neuroscience. The Guilford Press. Forrest, M. Thomas, G.V. (1991). An exploratory study of drawings by bereaved children, British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 30, 373-374. Kahneman, D. (2003). A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality. American Psychologist, 58, 697–720. Watson, D., Clark, L. A. (1994). The PANAS-X: Manual for the positive and negative affect schedule-Expanded Form. Iowa City: University of Iowa. Wimmer, H.; Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young childrens understanding of deception. Cognition  13(1), 103–128. Wellman, H. M., Cross, D., Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory-of-mind development: The truth about false belief. Child Development, 72, 655–684. Wellman, H. M., Liu, D. (2004). Scaling of Theory-Of-Mind Tasks. Child Development, 75(2), 523-541.

International Ductile Iron Pipes Co. Ltd (INDIPCO) Essay

International Ductile Iron Pipes Co. Ltd (INDIPCO) - Essay Example Ltd (INDIPCO) is an associate member of FAL Group of Companies. The group specializes in the manufacture of large ductile iron pipes with diameters ranging from 100mm to 2200mm. The company is located within the Royal Commission of Yanbua and Jubail in Jubail industrial city, covering an area of about 155,000m2. The company has an estimated production of about 200,000 tons of pipes annually. The company has its main customers within the Kingdom, in Europe and the MENA region. All INDIPCO processes are highly developed with the most current state of the art technologies, with its main equipment mainly sourced from Germany, China, USA and other leading technological states. All the equipment is installed and tested for a period of time under the supervision of experts from the above counties, to ensure the machine performs optimally with little hiccups in its systems. Generally, any experts involved in the maintenance and installation processes are highly conversant with ductile iron p ipes plants, to ensure quality and high standards are maintained within the company. The pipes manufactured and exported by INDIPCO are mainly used for water, firefighting, sewerage, effluents slurries, industrial water, and other fluids, meaning the company has a wide variety of pipes that target different clients in different segments. 1.2 Current main Projects The company undertakes massive water transmission projects portraying its expertise and skills in pipe manufacture and water and fluid transmission. An example of such an large scale projects still ongoing are a water transmission system covering an approximately 74,000 linear meters of pipes from Hali, Qanona, AL-Laitha and Yebh dams to AL Shoiba, which covers the phase one of the project. Another project is installation of suction lines for reservoirs in AL Madina covering a length of 134.2 km (INDIPCO, 2012). The company has therefore carved its reputation from handling mega projects in fluid transmission and manufacture of different grades of pipes to transmit different fluids both corrosive and non-corrosive. 2.0 Plant operation Process Fig. 1Pipe Manufacturing process The chart above summarizes the entire plant operation process in iron ductile pipe manufacturing to storage of finished pipes. 2.1 Mold Preparation and Maintenance. Mold making requires machines for mold welding, gridding and peening, and a lathe machine. Molds are used over and over till they wear out and fail to produce the required dimensional accuracy. After each, shift, the mold has to be replaced and maintained. The internal surface of the mold has to be ground using a sand wheel to remove any rust. The mold is then dotted with peening head to increase its crack resistance, and to improve its adhesion properties. All cracks on the internal surface of a mold have to be removed through turning, after which the turned area is welded and excess metal turned again to maintain the required dimensional controls. Grinding and peening ensure the mold finally has a smooth surface and is free from any cracks that may impair its usability. 2.2 Molten iron Preparation Molten iron, scrap steel, alloy and any rejected pipes are melted at this stage. The melting equipment is a two and three