11.2 Business Ethics

One of my favorite concepts discussed in COMM 244 was ethics in communication. This concept, so present and so absent in the organizations nowadays is indeed something that occupied my thoughts for long hours along this course. It is sad to realize that although the majority of companies defends that they have ethics in their businesses, actually, they have total lack of ethics in their businesses.

My final project in my undergraduate program was a thesis with focus on child labor. It broke my heart to realize that so many companies employee child labor. When I was collecting some interviews, many employers told me that they were actually doing a big favor by contracting children in their factories. They’d rather seeing children working than in the streets. My whole argument was that every single child deserves to enjoy the childhood in school, deserves to have time to play, to enjoy life with their loved, to be kids, instead of spending 12 hours working in a factory.

Bottom line is that the unethical behavior of many companies is so pervasive that many parents I interviewed sort of shared similar beliefs defended by these companies. Of course I only interviewed poor people, who obviously were struggling for more financial income. But from that point on, I started paying closer attention to how companies behave in the name of their own “ethics”.

Garota de Ipanema