Business ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 2

Business ethics - Essay Example The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the unethical behavior that occurred in Bhopal, India and to apply an ethical analysis from three different ethical views which are utilitarianism, deontological ethics and virtue ethics. The company initially involved in the Bhopal scandal was Union Carbide. Union Carbide is a chemical and polymers multinational company with a 90 year history that employs 3,800 people and whose global net sales for the fiscal year 2006 were $1776 million (Unioncarbide). The company in 1984 had a gas leakage in the city of Bhopal, India which caused the death of thousands of residents, contaminated the natural resources of the areas and caused injuries to hundreds of thousands of Indian people. The catastrophe is considered the biggest corporate accident in the 20th century. In 2001 Dow Chemicals purchased Union Carbide and is currently administering it as its subsidiary. Dow Chemicals is the 2nd largest chemical manufacturer in the world which in 2006 obtained net sales of $49,124 million (Dow). On the evening of December 2, 1984 the Union Carbide chemical plant located in Bhopal, India had a gas leakage of nearly 27 tons on the lethal gas methylisocyanate (Corporatenarc). The safety measures which were suppose to prevent this type of disaster all failed since the company did not audit the system to ensure they were operational. The death toll was approximately an 8,000 person count and nearly half a million residents in the area were exposed to the toxic gases from the Union Carbide plant. The human suffering was horrible and the event caused a total contamination of the natural resources of the area including the water supply. The company did not take responsibility for its actions and failed to perform the necessary clean up to minimize the damage to the environment cause by their mistake. The disaster of 1984