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General Motors in South Africa

In 1986, General Motors ended a 60-year tradition of South African auto manufacture. The corporation sold its Port Elizabeth plant to a local company. GM promised to license the plant and "provide certain critical components . . . in an effort to preserve the opportunities" in an area of high unemployment (Malone & Roberts, 1994, p. 87). The automaker attempted to put the most positive spin on the withdrawal.

Although the company avoided mentioning the fact, observers noted that recently introduced U.S. legislation proposed repealing South African income tax credits. This meant that GM was facing the double burden of income taxes in both the United States and South Africa. Negative public relations were also a factor. The costs of balancing the expectations of apartheid in South Africa and the anti-apartheid stance expected in the United States had simply become too high.

The U.S. anti-apartheid movement developed over a period of years. At its peak in the late 1980s, it was able to articulate and tap a rare sense of public unity about the use of corporate and government policy to promote change in a repressive outside government. The still-nascent struggle to define and enforce a sense of international business ethics is rarely so clear in its goals.

Legal and ethical experts still debate the moral obligations of corporations. That they must make a profit is clear. But do they have an obligation to maximize profits at any cost? What are their social obligations? The fine points vary, but American business and the public at large agree that corporations have a social responsibility. The question of responsibility in the international arena, where national standards falter and international law focuses mainly on trade details, is more open to debate.

Some thinking about the ethical role of business is still influenced by beliefs like those articulated by conservative economist Milton Friedman that "business'...

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General Motors in South Africa. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 14:06, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692676.html