Business Ethics

A business in today’s economy and market can only thrive when it has a strong relationship with its employees, customers, suppliers, stakeholders and community. When this relationship is strong the business will be successful, if the relationship is weak or untrusting the business will waiver and eventually fail leaving the community with an unforgiving sense of mistrust. A business has a social responsibility which can be defined as an organizations obligation to maximize its positive impact on stakeholders and minimize its negative impact. (Ferrell, 2009).

Company Q’s attitude and actions towards the given circumstances and scenarios do not meet the definition of being socially responsible and are quite disappointing. When Company Q closed the doors of the two stores that were located in high crime rate areas what did they actually contribute to the community? Did they not research their target areas or were these situations where the dynamics of the neighborhood changed? What Company Q did do was help drive a spiraling neighborhood deeper into poverty, by closing their doors they have left a neighborhood with no local grocery store. The neighborhood has yet another vacant building that may or may not be used properly but may become something that will continue to help bring the neighborhood down. Company Q has now put working people out of a job who depended on that paycheck every week or other week who were trying to better their situations. Company Q states that these doors were closed due to profit loss it seems as though this is just an excuse to use as a tax write off or to just cut their losses. There are other ways that Company Q could have tried to keep the store open talk with community leaders, talk with the customers. Did they just not offer the products that their community desired? There has to be a reason that these two stores were losing money despite the high crime area.

Company Q started offering high margin items that were health...