Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics Essay

Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics - Essay Example The people and neighbours nearby the plant were in great dilemma. The Corporation blamed the Indian workers and managers for such incident. Various cases were filed against the corporation and the chairman at Indian courts (Browning, 1993). In this paper, a study has been conducted based on the Bhopal gas leak disaster. One of the prime objectives of the paper will be to analyse the role of the former chairman of Union Carbide Corporation, Mr. Anderson regarding his fault in the dreadful explosion of MIC from the plant. The paper also deals with the stakeholder theory and corporate citizenship of the plant administered by Union Carbide in Bhopal, India. Furthermore, the paper will discuss about whether the corporation was successful or failed in their responsibility towards society. The stakeholder theory of the Corporation will also be highlighted by referring to the theoretical framework. 2.0 Is Anderson to blame at all for this accident? Union Carbide Corporation’s parent c ompany Dow Chemical Company is one of the biggest producers of chemical in the United States. The corporation is operating in various countries throughout the world. The plant had started its operation in Bhopal in the year 1969 with $25 million manufacturing facility. The plant was named as Union Carbide of India, Ltd (UCIL). Since its headquarters is in the US, technical and financial operations of the plant were performed in the US. Government of India also owned a certain part of the plant. Due to the incident of Bhopal disaster in 1986 as well as pressure from the US judges, the corporation approved to pay $425 million for the victims of the incident. Later the Union Carbide changed their opinion towards the victims. Mr. Warren Anderson, who was the chairman of the corporation, visited India after such incident and said everything would be done for the victims of Bhopal tragedy. He offered $1million for such dreadful disaster and to build hospital, orphanage as well as vocation al schools (Gupta, 2002). The incident was caused since proper safety measures were not adopted in the plant. The chairman was responsible to manage all the operations but he did not conduct them properly. The Carbide engineers were involved in the final design as well as construction of the plant. Due to possible limitation in the designing of plant such incident had occurred. There was inadequacy from the Union Carbide Corporation in safety measures, deficient in cooling facilities, defective alarm systems, poor maintenance and storage of excessive amounts of toxic materials. However, the corporation was not willing to admit their shortcomings and were rather blaming the workers for such damage. Various homicide charges were also filed against the top nine officers of the Corporation besides Chairman Anderson. In the US, the corporation had installed all the safety measures for the individuals working there. However, in one of the third world country, i.e. in India, Union Carbide did not adopt adequate safety measures for the workers in the plant (Browning, 1993). The deadly Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) was imported to India from the US in order to stimulate foreign direct investment. From that period onwards, the Bhopal plant