Water Privatization – Coca Cola
Identify the stakeholders and the ethical actors in the case.
The stakeholders in this case would consist of:
The companys shareholders
The suppliers of the companys equipment and materials necessary to produce or market their end product or service
The employees of the company
The customers purchasing the end product or service
Competitors of the company
Distributors
The government
Civil society
The ethical actors would consist of:
Coca-Cola
Nestle
+/- (Privatized water suppliers)
Identify the ethical issues associated with the situation described in the case
Many people are without a ready supply of fresh, disease-free water and everyone needs water to survive. Water conservation and amount of utilization are definitely ethical concerns for the companies involved in the case.
Another ethical issue is that of the cost of water, especially when the market is privatized and is being dominated by several large players. In this scenario, the poor and/or the disease stricken become unable to afford the water that is made available and suffer as a result.
The ethical actor, Coca-Cola, in this case attempted to address the issues of global conservation and management of water resources with non-governmental organizations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Replenish Africa Initiative and the CEO Water Mandate. Similar projects were also started by Nestle.
I think the water suppliers in this case also have an ethical responsibility for supplying safe drinking water and sanitation water to the citizens just as it does to the user of water as a raw material or as a product to sell.
For each ethical actor discuss what they might have done to live up to their ethical
duties and obligations or what virtuous action would look like for that actor.
I first must say that being “proactive” would be the first step in living up to the companies mentioned above duties. In other words, these companies should have taken action and addressed societys concerns prior to initially placing blame of water shortage on the low rainfall as Coca-Cola did or allowing regulators to become involved and bans to be issued regarding the production of bottled water as was the case with Nestle.
Interestingly,