Legal and Ethical Leadership in Management (Essay Sample)

Legal and ethical leadership in management
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Introduction
Business ethics and management require clearly set of intellectual property. This is to protect illegal business in the name of profit. This paper will discuss legal considerations involving three business men. Ethics in this case refers to breach of intellectual property rights and unhealthy competition in the business of fashion and clothing. There exists a retailer manufacturer relationship in this case. Mathis competitor is in breach of property rights following his decision to use photographs and images of clothes made by Mathis. This paper will outline ethical issues in the case, existence of federal laws to protect intellectual property rights, damages in breach of property rights, criminal liability in relation to conduct of a business competitor in line of business. This will be accompanied with clear explanations in relation to the cases (Blair, 2012).
Response to ethical consideration involving Normandale
It can be ethical for Normandale to sell fashion clothing at a lower price. The unethical issues in this lower price selling will involve the selling of samples of another business. The knock-off products did have images/labels of Mathis products. Label line represents a protected intellectual property to a registered business. The lower pricing strategy may not be unethical. The ethical concern in this case is the making of identical lines of another business and then selling them at a lower price to make a profit. This is purely unethical. Ethical leadership and management requirement enforcement of intellectual property rights in any business. This will protect business men from unhealthy competition emanating from unscrupulous traders in the same industry. This will also cut down incidence of black market activities in business.
Federal or state laws which protect owners of intellectual property; relevant application
There exists an intellectual property law which protects original work of business person, artists. The federal laws cover everything in relation to identification marks such as cloth line of a given business. Federal laws in relation to intellectual property covers copyrights, patents and trademarks. The importance of federal laws in relation to intellectual property is to protect business innovations as well as promote economic growth. Design patents covers laws in relation to cloth line and seek to protect unique features of manufacturers. Most manufacturers would like to protect the ay their clothes appear and their presence in the market.
Trademark laws protect products of one retailer with that if a competitor in a market. This will aid consumers to closely see the differences between different clothing once availed in the market. Violation of intellectual property laws swill all for payment of damages to injured party.
The cloth line in this case belongs to Mathis. The cloth line is there to distinguish clothes made by Mathis from those made by the competitors. The act of sending photographs and samples of Mathis cloth line with instructions to make identical ones amounts to breach of intellectual property rights (Blair, 2005). This is violation of original ideas of a company and calls for damages resulting from such and related action.
The application of intellectual property requires injunction from making similar products and selling of the products in the market. In this case, the property laws will refrain Mathis competitor from proceeding to make identical clothes and subsequently sell them to the market.
Damages
The essence of a cloth line is to differentiate products of a given business person from those of competitors. The decision to make identical line and sell at a lower price will decline sales volume of the Mathis Company. The selling of counterfeit clothing will impact the quality of the cloth line in the market. Counterfeits are usually of low quality and it is usually difficulty to differentiate them from the original product belonging to renowned cloth line. The selling of counterfeit at gross profit of $3 million is damage to revenue base of the original business idea owner. In the event that at least case is instituted, the damages will be to the amount the competitor had managed to sell in the market (Hunter, 2012).
Views of the social responsibility of corporations such as Normandale
Social responsibility aspects refer to the protection of consumers from high prices and quality aspects. According to Normandale, the selling at lower prices is aimed at giving consumers alternatively affordable clothing. This is because; Mantis is only interested in profit maximization by selling his cloth line at relatively high prices. There is need for welfare maximization in selling of products in the market.
On the contrary, Normandale is selling counterfeit clothes at high gross profit of almost $3 million. There is no genuine protection of consumers from exorbitant prices in relation to basic products. Counterfeiting of products of another business is an illegality in business. This counterfeit acts are socially irresponsible .This is because once the counterfeits are availed in the market, it is hard to differentiate them with the original high quality products. This is a sign of social irresponsibility on the part of Normandale.
Ethical code
Ethics requires healthy competition in the market. There is a requirement to respect intellectual property rights of business ideas in the market. Ethical codes require competitors to seek permission when it wants to make profit from other business idea. The owner possesses exclusive right to own and sell the idea to the business people in the market. Business ethics require respect of intellectual property and protection of trademarks and patents. I this case, it is unethical to send images of another business cloth line for manufacturing at relatively low prices. Observation of ethical codes will aid owners of Normandale to hesitate from future violation of business intellectual property rights. This will guide them to seek permission from the original owner before proceeding to execute an illegality in the market. This will also create awareness of damages in relation to the breach of intellectual property rights.
When there is a breach of right to a property, there are damages resulting from such lia...