1.

0 Introduction
The objective and purpose of this research study is to critically assess and evaluate how
globalization has affected organizations and multinational corporations’ ethical practices and how
it impacts the business environment and the society at large.

Coca Cola Company as a multinational corporation will be used to assess the company’s activities
and the controversies of the company’s ethical standards by applying various ethical principles to
evaluate whether or not the company has been ethical in its practices.

2.0 Literature Review

The literature review section of the assignment will focus on the meaning and trend of
globalization and how globalization has influences the growth and activities of multinational
corporations. This section will further define the meaning of ethics and the types of ethical
principles that govern business activities.

2.1 What is Globalization

Globalization has been in existence since time immemorial, it is the process that involves
movements, interactions and integration between societies, organizations, economies and even
governments from various nations (Stiglitz & Joseph, 2003). Globalization is driven by two
distinctive processes, international trade and investment and these processes has motivated the
integration of globalization within nations.

2.2 Emergence of Globalization

Globalization occurs rapidly and it has grown to overcome distance, time and borders unlike ever
before. Since time in immemorial, trade has been in existence, people and sailors travel for months
from one region to another in exchange of goods. The European explorers travel from Europe to
Asia and Africa in search of goods and minerals to explore and has a result the spread of
civilization occurred.

Globalization in the early centuries was very slow and it takes months to move from one country
to another. On the other hand, current trends of globalization according to Thomas Friedman is
Farther, Faster, Cheaper and Deeper, and this rapid movements and integration is aided by
technology which is constantly connecting people from various nations (ref).

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The emergence of globalization has resulted into the formation of free trade within nations,
governments in various nations have created less barriers that lessened the trade within countries
and as a result, countries are trading more within themselves as ever before in history. Some of the
free trade agreements signed between countries are: Trans-pacific Partner Agreement (TPPA) that
involves more than 12 nations across the globe, NAFTA, EU, AU, ECOWAS, ASEAN and so on.
These agreements allow member countries to trade amongst themselves with less or no barriers
(David A. Deese, 2016)

2.3 Multinational Corporations (MNCs)

Multination Corporations (MNCs) are organizations, enterprises and corporations that are
operating in more than one country. A company or a corporation than produces and manufactures
goods and services beyond its borders is an MNC. Due to the trend in globalization, businesses are
now created with the opportunity to operate in more countries not just their home countries and
this process is made easy due to the impact of free trade agreements that enable partnering
countries to easily exchange goods and service.

Figure 1 Spreading of MNCs in the Global Market

(Aperkshit Mulay, 2016)

The diagram above clearly shows the movements of MNCs within countries from various
continents and this is due to the factors mentioned above such as integration through Free Trade
Agreement.

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3.0 Ethics and Ethical Principles
3.1 What is Ethics?

Is literally means a set of rules that govern the principles and actions that defines rights and wrong.
Business Ethics is the overall guidelines on how business operations need to be conducted to
preserve both organizational, environmental and as well as individual or customer well-being (ref).
There are a set of principles and standards that govern business decisions to weigh out the “good”
and “bad” of the decisions and these standards are known as Ethical Principles.

3.2 Principles of Ethics

3.2.1 Utilitarian Principle