Unethical Behavior and Child Labor in Supply Chains: Willful Ignorance

Rating

Unethical Behavior and Child Labor in Supply Chains: Willful Ignorance

Even though many organizations claim to comply to strict policies with regard to human rights such as child labor, reports by Amnesty International revealed that still a lot of technology companies are linked to child labor. Some companies argue that it is impossible to track the source of their raw materials, and to verify that supplying companies are behaving responsible and ethical.So despite the claims of many organizations to adhere to strict rules and policies about ethics, reports about unethical behavior within organizations' supply chains are still commonplace.
Zane, Irwin and Reczek (2016) claim a possible explanation for this contradiction can be found in the concept of "willful ignorance", referring to organizations not actively researching their supply chains to obtain such information. This phenomenon occurs both in consumer and organizational contexts:

1. CONSUMER CONTEXT: Consumers tend to – either consciously or unconsciously – neglect information regarding unethical activities within organizational supply chains. Consumers will factor the information about (un)ethical behavior of organizations into their decision making. But they will not further investigate the issue, because the outcomes may be hard to process and lead to negative feelings about purchasing the product/service. In other words, human coping mechanisms make them prefer to remain blind for information that will be hard to deal with.
2. ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT: Organizations tend to ignore information related to unethical behavior in their supply chain for the simple reason of refraining from the possible costly outcomes. Willful ignorance does not mean that organizations will not take actions when reports of unethical behavior are reported. It just means that they will be ignorant if the information has not been revealed yet.

Because of the above, reports by third parties about supply chain activities of organizations are valuable in that it forces them to think about ethical issues. But they do not necessarily spur actual changes in their behavior due to the fact that these reports often contain information about several competing organizations at once. As a result organizations will not feel more or less ethical than their competitors and may not feel a (strong) need to change.

⇒ To what extent do you believe that reports by parties such as Amnesty International are important to spur changes in organizations' supply chains?

Source: Zane, D., Irwin, J. and Reczek, R.W. (2016) "Why Companies Are Blind to Child Labor" Harvard Business Review

		Comments by date▼ Comments by rating Rating
		5 Ismael Bena MBA, Netherlands
	Child Labor in Supply Chains This is a great point, as companies naturally tend to refrain from self-initiated actions to evaluate their supply chain from exploitation, and thus the cost associated with rehabilitation or switching their suppliers (from which the latter is the least favorable as the problem would still insist). Increasing public awareness often proofs to be a powerful medium, as customers' purchase power often sparks the shifts in corporate policies needed to combat this. In support of Amnesty International, I believe the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) could be more pressing on this issue to trigger action. Even though action is still voluntarily, the outcomes would still be accessible for all stakeholders.

		5 Edward Watson Director, United States
	Role of Leaders in Corporate Responsibility I've found that, especially in hierarchical structures, leaders are reluctant to ask questions they believe will lead to negative answers and therefore negative and costly solutions. This creates a culture of willful ignorance that trickles down to subordinate levels of the institution. From personal experience, I can confirm that the size of the institution has a definite correlation to the amount of energy placed into investigating questionable practices by external collaborators. Keeping bad news from the higher ups becomes more important (and possible) as the size of the organization increases.

		2 Thato Fredrich Peloentle, Botswana
	Classification of Child Labour in Rural Areas It is very true. Sometimes it depends on how a country views/classifies child labour. Recently one country approved a policy to allow children over the age of 10 to work in order to remedy the poverty situation in most rural areas.

		3 Murtada Khidir Mohamed Abuzaid Consultant, Qatar
	Moral Intensity Construct (Jones) The moral intensity constructs developed by Jones (1991) and its associated six variables may avail the needed answer. Issues like the magnititude of the consequences, social consencus about what is right, proximity of the incident, etc. All will act to offer some explanations why people do what they do. Positive ethical decision making models and normative theories will act together to develop a better framework for assessing ethics and its impact.

		2 Josephat Olwal Ngesah Kenya
	We Should Address the Root Causes of Child Labor and Poverty This is definitely an important conversation for businesses. I would like to thank Transparency International (TI) for picking it up. From where I sit, this is an economic problem with a political answer. I would urge TI to go ahead and lobby the world economic leaders to have it as an agenda item in the G-meetings. I am crossing my fingers that it will not be accorded lukewarm and "tongue-in-cheek" kind of approach like we have witnessed in the climate discussion meetings, that is if it will be considered at all. Use of child labor is a human rights issue just like poverty. What that refers to as classification of child labor above is regrettable. Child labor is child labor and no amount of classification will change that. Even if allowing children to work just because they are poor is often a reality of the developing economies, especially on the Asian and African continents, it is never justified. The issue is to address the root causes of poverty, which in Africa, is not rocket science. The majority is poor leadership and greed.

		3 Brillo L. Reynes Consultant, Philippines
	Recognizing and Resolving Child Labor. Role of CSR I agree this ethical problem exists, especially in less developed countries where many children are not in school and their parents do not have enough income to ensure their education. Organisations and institutions such as Amnesty International, therefore, have a necessary role of bringing such issues to light and to advocate for their proper resolution. But RECOGNIZING the problem is one thing, RESOLVING it is another matter altogether. A developing country may lack the wherewithal to address such problems effectively. This highlights the importance of CSR initiatives, both of developed economies and successful enterprises, to mitigate the problem of child labor and similar underdevelopment challenges. But most importantly, awareness should be complemented with positive action.

		2 Paramathmuni srinivas Kumar India
	Living in Spirit May be the Solution Willful Ignorance affects the further progress. Living in spirit by leaders may help. We may define 'spirit' as follows; accepting that opposites coexist and in spite of the existence of these opposi...

		4 Gerald Richards Business Consultant, Australia
	Profit is the Religion and the Shareholder is God In the good old / bad days, people committed offences against their fellow being while claiming that it was God on their side and they were doing his bidding. Now, in the corporate world, there is a ...

		3 Ismael Bena MBA, Netherlands
	Why 'Sweat-Shop' Issues are Neglected in Underdeveloped Countries Often, underdeveloped or emerging countries, with little influence on large organizations, are faced with dilemmas to enforce social behaviour on corporation. Newell (2000:121) argues, "… frequently t...

		1 Josephat Olwal Ngesah Kenya
	Governments Burying their Heads in the Sand @Ismael Bena MBA: The question is for how long will governments keep on burying their heads in the sand for the sake of multinationals as will they continue to reap "immoral" profits? My assumption is...

		1 KALEELUL RAHUMAN Management Consultant, Saudi Arabia
	The Roles of Companies and Politicians in Child Labor Obviously child labor is common in developing and underdeveloped nations. Some well-known multinational companies are investing in these counties just because labor cost are lower. In other words they...

		4 Ismael Bena MBA, Netherlands
	Governments Held Hostage to Choose Between Two Social Evils @Josephat Olwal Ngesah: I agree with you that governments should use other criteria to support domestic/foreign investment, in line with global accepted humanitarian practices. Even if many of these ...

		1 Briolett, Canada
	History Shows This is Hard to Change There have been many labour movements throughout North America, who once experienced what underdeveloped countries are now facing: - It was the workers who forced the change, often at the cost of the...

		2 Ismael Bena MBA, Netherlands
	What we Did Learn from the Past! I concur with you @Briolett, history has learned us that shifting of a paradigm is challenging. Generally speaking, shifting of paradigms takes decades to accomplish, especially since they also need ...

		2 Andrew Blaine Business Consultant, South Africa
	Child Labour - a Complex Situation Forced child labour is always abhorrent. However, in many developing countries, particularly where AIDS and HIV has played a significant part in life, many families are headed by children of between 9...

		6 Francis Joseph United Kingdom
	Combine Education with Constructive Labour In areas where there is obvious persistent child labour - despite the volume and numerous calls and conferences by child protection advocates - this abuse continues. We continue to see the sad faces o...

		2 Edy Khalife Manager, Lebanon
	Ethics Enforcement Concerns Two major concerns arose specifically at international organizations: First, ethics rules and policies are not integrated in the core missions of organizations. Thus no regular reviews are imposed an...

		2 Tim Dibble Project Manager, United States
	Assumed Standard Like the use of chemical weapons in war, child labor assumes everyone is on the same page. But clearly we are not, as many comments point to instances justifying child labor. Too many people fall in...

		2 Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	Done with Willful Ignorance? What Companies Should Do To companies who are done with "willful ingorance", I recommend an article in HBR about the measures companies can take to avoid they end up in a situation of reputational damage, following public unr...

		1 Andrew Blaine Business Consultant, South Africa
	Bob a Job and its Benefits Use of child labour remains a sensitive issue. When I was young the "Bob a Job" (Editor: ~The British practice of children undertaking to do small jobs around the home, originally for a charge of one ...

		4 Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	What Leaders can do to Combat Child Labour In case you’re wondering how certain clothes and products can be so incredibly cheap…? The obvious answer from this discussion is that somebody somewhere else is paying the price… I think most ingred...

		1 Gerald Richards Business Consultant, Philippines
	Simple Solution Companies claiming to have difficulty knowing about child labour in their supply chain could work with and pay organisations like Amnesty International to find out. Or would that be too simple?...

		0 Maurice Hogarth Consultant, United Kingdom
	Turning a Blind Eye "Turning a blind eye.", "Burying Your Head in the Sand.", are "requirements" of any CEO and Board, given the primary requirement to make short-term profit, primarily to benefit shareholders; if they w...