The idea of the companies and industries holding a supply such as a cure that public needs but has no access to shows a lack of ethical as well as self-centeredness in the managers and owners of these firms.
Even though this show how concerned the companies are towards their employees, the motive behind this changes the whole thing to negativity.
Critically analyzed, the only reason that any company strives to keep the health of their workers in a go condition is to maintain and improve their level of output to maintain and improve the profit trend of the company.
This explains the reason behind the company looking forward to establishing avian-influenza drug Tamiflu within the company for its employees and staffs. However, the rest of the community will have no idea of the existence of the drug and will be exposed to threats of the disease attack.
This scenario poses two questions, who will inform the society on the availability of the drug and who will ensure the health of the community is taken care of- the community which is the customer of what these companies and industries are seeking to improve its production.
It is important to clearly state that companies protecting their employees are not unethical.
However, protecting its employees alone is what is unethical. In every juncture, it is worth realizing that what succeeds the strategic goals of any given company is not only the means of production; rather, the most important is the market of these products.
No matter how much any company produces, if the market of these products is paralyzed, there are no benefits achieved at the end. Hence it is important for the company to consider the health of its customers as important as that of its employees (Robbins &Coulter 2008).
Despite the factors of sustaining the potential of its customers, it is also ethical for companies to step out of income bracket and extend their services in a social manner to the people around their locality.
Any company needs to ensure that its society does not only benefit from what they produce, but also from factors that give them solutions to their daily problem. One way of doing this is ensuring that the society is educated and it is in good health.
Provision of means of acquiring this needs to be extended to the introduction of the facilities needed and the institutions concerned such as good health centers and schools.
In such cases, the introduction of necessary medicines needed regardless of how rare they are in their acquisition needs to be provided to the people through these health centers.
Due to the incapability of people to acquire these facilities, it is the duty of developed bodies within the society such as these companies to ensure people benefit by any means. Hence the company should strive to support the community in which it operates.
More importantly, keeping a healthy relationship between the company and the society is very important for the environmental friendliness of the company and the availability of a ready market.
One danger of holding this cure from the society is that if people realize that you are holding a live-saving medicine from them, they will likely turn against you either directly or indirectly.
For instance, on realizing that the company is interested in their relationship as a customer-distributer model and nothing to do with their welfare, they may decide to physically attack the company to get the medicine for themselves.
Besides contributing to the high loss, this to a severe case may lead to total closure of the company. Also, society may lose confidence with the company and drift away from being its active customers (Robbins &Coulter 2008).
Also, the company employees come from these societies which the company is holding the medicine from. This means that the company has not dealt with the root of the problem as they are focused on the health of their workers once they are within the company.
However, in the outbreak of the disease, the employees in their interaction with outside relatives will with no doubt contaminate the disease and spread it within the company.
The presence of the curative measure does not make the situation better as when the problem could have been dealt with extensively. Also, this will increase vices from the employees themselves.
Seeing close friends and relatives suffering from a disease which they know that their employer has the cure will make the employees look for means of getting the medicine to their people even if it means stealing it.
This will interfere with the employer-worker relation affecting the productivity of the employees. In extreme cases, this will lead to a conflict of employers and their employees who will view them as discriminatory.
However, other alternatives are available, rather than keeping the keeping medicine waiting for a bird-flu strike. First, employment of preventive measures both towards the employees and society is an important factor as this will save the whole society from the threat of the disease attack.
As a result, there will be no need for companies to establish their private curative bodies.
On the other side, since both ways are associated with cost incurrence, the introduction of preventive measures to all will ensure that the cost is not recurrent due to processes of repeated treatment of employees from outside interaction as well as the results are beneficial to all.
Also, this will cut the cost associated with the establishment of private stash (Robbins &Coulter 2008).
Secondly, both the government and the companies can combine resources and ensure that there is an establishment of clinics to deal with cases of bird flu.
This will ensure that the high cost of acquiring these medicines does not fall on one side and that the outcome will be beneficial to the two sides involved.
This will also ensure that the medicine is made available in people’s medicine cabinet any time and will prevent the stockpiling of medicine for unknown time waiting for an epidemic strike.
Thirdly, either the government or companies or both should come up with education programmes to the employees and the community which will enable them to prepare in advance for any potential pandemic.
They should educate them on ways of minimizing the outbreak if not total controlling such as informing them what bird-flu is, encouraging them to observe hygienic conditions, as well as preparing shots for regular flu.
Reference list
Robbins, S &Coulter, M. (2008). Management. Portage: Prentice Hall.