International Business Management. Business & Marketing Case Study

International Business
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Executive Summary
The document is a report of the concerns that the regional director of Danlaw identified in the operations of EB Electronics. The report is written for the international director, who will help the business develop a strategy to address the issues. The document also contains proposition on how the concerns can be addressed. The report is divided into three parts. The first part is the introduction, which gives a brief explanation of the case and identifies some of the critical issues. It also gives a brief analysis of international business as a concept and various factors that influence it. The other part is the main report, which describes the concerns raised on the matter of EB across different factors, which include supply chain, ethical issues, and business values. The document effectively gives an analysis of the problems that arise from the practices of EB.
Introduction
International business involves the trading of goods of services outside the borders of the nation. It’s a business that is built on the concepts of exporting and importing. Exporting on the basis of selling outside the country and importing on the basis of buying outside the country. International business is governed by many factors which include trading blocs, foreign policies, custom duties among others. In international business it is vital that a company upholds ethical conduct in the nature of their dealing so as to do clean business and also ensure that its practices are beneficial to the populations in the countries they dealing in. In this case, I used a case of Danlaw Manufacturers and EB Electronics.
The regional director of Danlaw Manufacturing has some concerns with the company’s leading supplier EB Electronics. Danlaw, a company that produces high-end electronics through advanced technology gets its raw materials from EB Electronics. EB imports all of its raw materials from Japan. The director’s concerns include mineral conflicts, child labor in the country of import and human slavery. She also has concerns about the issues that may arise for overreliance on goods from one country. She also raises concerns about ethical issues that may arise from the supply chain. She wants to file a report on the problems of concern to the international director so that the company can seek solutions to address these issues that have arisen from their primary supply. The address is essential especially the BREXIT. Below are the concerns that the company face for their supplier relying on only one country as a source of their raw materials.
Report
Danlaw is a company that significantly observes ethical issues in its way of operations. As a company that seeks not only to do business for profits but also to leave a positive impact on all the people it relates to, the company’s attention has been drawn to the ways of operation to our major supplier EB Electronics. It is due to these concerns that this report has been prepared with the goal of seeking ways to address the concerns. EB Electronics imports all its products from Japan, which has triggered the concerns. There have also been critical ethical issues that have arisen in the supply chain. Our goal and focus remain to produce quality electronic equipment at the same time safeguard our values and ensure positive impact on the communities we involve with (Bowie, 2017). It is to this goal that this report has been written discussing in great length some of the issues and why they are a concern to us.
* Concerns on outsourcing electronic components
EB Electronics’ sole source of materials in Japan. It is this practice that has dramatically caused our concern. The reason is that global sourcing especially overreliance has been known to cause many problems especially to the people of the country from which the supply is done. Our company as part of our ethics seeks to ensure that all the communities we deal with are protected from negative kickbacks that may come from our activities (Antras et al., 2017, pp2514-64). EB, on the other hand, does not look into the negative impacts that their practices may have as long as they get what they have. Discussed are some issues that may arise from overreliance on products from one global source, especially from a country that isn’t as well economically as the UK.
* Conflict of minerals
Electronics are made from mined products, i.e. metallic metals e.g. copper, aluminum, etc. Over-reliance on products from one country means that large quantities are being imported from one place. The excessive demand leads to exploitation of such materials (Bregman et al. 2015, pp229-243). Preservation and proper utilization of resources, e.g. minerals are one of the critical moral responsibilities endowed to all companies (Leipold et al. 2016 pp294-304). Our company has high regard for ethical issues hence a great concern with the exploitation of minerals in Japan (Daniels et al. 1998).
* Child labour
Child labour is most common in low economies. Large corporations engage in this act as a source of cheap labour. Our concern has been drawn to the actions of EB because we fear that in the source the children may be at risk of exploitation to provide the company with adequate products at low prices (Vos et al. 2016, pp338-350). Given the impacts that child labour has on children and the ethical issues surrounding such an issue, we at Danlaw would not like to engage with a company that engages in activities that put children at risk of being exploited.
* Human slavery
Human slavery, since time in history has been the most prominent source of cheap labour. Low-income economies are most affected by such acts, especially from large corporations (Gold et al. 2015 pp485-494). Our concern is that the overreliance on products from Japan has something to do with low prices. The low-prices can maybe due to low wages paid to the workers. Mining is one of the economic activities that is greatly involved in slavery (Voss et al. 2019 pp61-76). It is important that our company finds ways to protect our values (Ferrellet al. 2015). Human slavery is against our values, so we should find sources for equipment that do not encourage human slavery.
Approaches to address the concerns
The possibility of the above mentioned issues to happen in Japan due to the overreliance on it as a source for equipment by EB, has prompted our company with an accord to our business ethics, to have the need to get solutions to the issues. The concerns can be addressed by encouraging EB to look for other markets to import the items from. This way, they won’t overreliance on the supply of Japan. It will help reduce the risk of these social issues. Another proposed solution is ensuring that EB observes the mandatory due diligence to protect human rights from the people of Japan from where they get the items from. Our company being a major client to EB can use our position to influence their ethical conduct. We can partner and do some Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects so as to improve the well-being of these people.
As a major provider of equipment to our company, we cannot just drop EB because this may greatly interfere with our operations. The best solution for this case is one that will influence the ethical practices of EB. It is also essential that we share our concerns with EB on the concerns we have on their way of doing business. It may prompt them to act on them hence upholding the ethics that we at Danlaw stand for.
* Supply Chain concerns
EB Electronics imports electronic components from Japan in the form of raw materials, which they process the sell to us, Danlaw Manufacturing, to use in the production of our high-end technological equipment. EB gets all its products from Japan, which has caused our concern. There some key factors that should be observed in the supply chain that is missing in the dealings with EB Electronics.
* Mandatory Due Diligence
It is a factor in the supply chain that seeks to ensure that huma...