Micro-commentary 1: Fight Grows Over Labels on Household Cleaners

Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/business/energy-environment/17green.html?ref=business

Summary:
This article is about concerns from consumers about the chemicals in household cleaning product. In many of such products, there are small amount of chemicals within which is not put on the label because the producers do not want to reveal to their competitors about what exactly is in their products, preventing the competitors to copy their products. However, although only a small amount of the “secret chemicals” is applied and no immediate effects of such chemicals are found, the consumers are concerned with the long term health effects of those small amount of chemicals.

Units:
Unit 1.3 Organizational Objectives; Unit 1.4 Stakeholders

Commentary:
This article deals with the ethical issue companies in a specific industry faces. In this case, the ethical option is to put the information about chemicals, which is of small amount and is secret that add a specialty to the product, on the label, but the compliance cost to follow this actions is to lose values added to the products. That's because if a company was to put the information about the chemical on to the label, the chemical, which may serve to some special functions that specialize the product, may be used by the company's competitors. Therefore the product lose the “specialness” from the chemical added, and thus the chemical's value added to the product is lost.
However, the consumers are concerned with what health effects does those chemicals do, especially in the long term. They even filed lawsuits against some of the companies in the household cleaning industry. In all, this is a stakeholders conflict between the internal stakeholders, such as the owners of the company and the managers, and the consumers. However, this conflict extends further than between these two stakeholders. The government and special interest groups of both sides, which are the industry association and the consumer group. This conflict thus turns out into a big fight.
In my opinion, if I were a company in household cleaning given this situation, I would take the ethical option despite the compliance cost of losing the “specialness” of the chemicals in the product. That's because I think in this industry, it is essential to be market-oriented, that is to fulfill the consumer's needs and wants since this industry gets profit totally from the consumers. Although this may give my competitors an advantage, if those competitors do not reveal their own secret chemicals they added to their products, consumers, whom are mostly also customers, will choose my products over theirs because I reveal the information. Therefore, I am essentially at fair grounds with the competitors. Thus, I would stick to the ethical option. Moreover, I would have gain status in being a socially responsible corporation.