Mcdonald's Business Ethics Case Study

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Introduction
McDonald’s is the world’s leading chain of fast food restaurants with more than 36,000 restaurants serving nearly 69 million consumers per day across over 100 countries (McDonald’s, 2015). Operating business in an international context with highly increasing competition, McDonald’s and many large corporations are being stuck in conflict with business ethics for profitability. Business ethics are defined by Berger & Herstein (2014, p.1075) as “the application of ethical principles to issues that arise in the conduct of business activity”. This ethical audit will investigate in some contemporary management issues of McDonalds to clarify to what extents McDonalds is operating on the right or wrong tracks.
Treatment of labour
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294) stated that discrimination is a violation of Rawls’ Theory of Justice which states that “people are equal to one another in their ability and freedom and in a natural and original state, no one will have prior claim to power over anyone else” (Vardy & Grosch, 1999, p.138). These discriminated workers are lacked of inequality of human rights, they should have “the right to be treated fairly and equitably, with its links to concepts of rights, obligations and an ethical dimension” (Bratton & Gold, 2012). Hence, ethics of rights are applied to justify McDonald’s unethical discrimination. McDonald’s managers lack of virtues ethics because virtuous people would show compassion, integrity with strong moral principles towards their employees and encourage their workers so that they can build a meaningful employment environment (Barclay, Markel & Yugo, 2012). The facts at McDonalds working site is contrast with this ideal …show more content…
There is an open communication in McDonald’s organization where employees have freedom to speak and give feedback to managers (Goldman, Santos & Tully, 2008). This helps to create a truthful relationship between authentic leaders and employees and encourage (Alok, 2014). Ray Kroc_ CEO of McDonald’s in 2009, was an evidence of authentic leader who has self-sacrifice (Nichols & Erakovich, 2013). He, even the CEO, picked up the wastepaper in the parking lot to make a good example: “cleanliness was a continual job for everyone” (Deutschman, 2009). Azanza et al. (2015) support that an authentic leader increase their employee engagement by strengthening the identification of each individual. McDonald’s has helped their employees to have self-growth and have a feeling of important and valuable by providing them with such various training and development programs as Hamburger University, Global Mobility, Leadership Development an Internships (McDonald’s, 2015). These above authentic leadership evidences of McDonald’s reflects ethical behaviours in terms of virtues ethics and utilitarianism ethics. Authentic leaders of McDonald’s have virtuous characteristics such as reliable, self-confident, self-sacrifice and trustworthy, those virtuous leaders also have a wish to foster employee’s strengths and create a positive organization (Joo

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