Marketing - Profits over Safety

PROGRRESS REPORT

“PROFITS OVER SAFETY”

TO:                 Dr. Dana Loewy

FROM:         Rishyanth Kodela, Abhilash Reddy and Ruiyang Ma

DATE:         10/9/2014

SUBJECT:         A report regarding the ongoing status of our group project

Scope and Purpose:

The rise of the Industrial Revolution is the primary reason for the downfall of safety in several industries and due to this hazardous working conditions, worker exploitation, carelessness and lack of responsibility are seen and practiced. Thorough research has been done about the companies such as Nike which outsourced their business to parts of Asia and exploited many workers, BP due to carelessness caused a major oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico causing a major environmental issue, Environmental damage caused by Shell in Nigeria and General Motors product quality and how it ignored the safety of its cars. The sole purpose of this report is to put light on how these companies compromised safety norms in many aspects and concentrated only on profits.

Activities and Progress:

We have selected four companies which are exploiting the rules and regulations and divided it according to the trouble the companies have caused. We researched and discussed about how these companies caused various problems and what steps they should’ve taken, how this could have been avoided with strict rules and regulation which these companies should have followed. The major research about the companies has been completed with only few minor topics left out to be discussed.

Further Work:

As of now, research regarding worker exploitation, product quality and safety and the environmental effects has been completed. We also have analyzed the losses that the companies have incurred because of the mistakes they committed. We are only left with minor topics like the future outcomes if the companies in case still choose to ignore these problems instead of rectifying them.

Outcomes and Lessons Learned:

In preparation for this assignment, each member of our team was assigned particular tasks and discussed about the findings of the companies. After in depth discussion of each member’s respective findings we learned some disturbing facts about how these companies mercilessly just for their own profits took few decisions which affected others. We hope to find the weak spots and give appropriate recommendations in order to maintain the profits without compromising safety.