CASE V: CONSCIENCE OR COMPETITIVE EDGE

The plane touched down at Mumbai airport precisely on time. Olivia Jones made her way through the usual

immigration bureaucracy without incident and was finally ushered into a waiting limousine, complete

with uniformed chauffeur and soft black leather seats. Her already considerable excitement at being in

India for the first time was mounting. As she cruised the dark city streets, she asked her chauffeur why

so few cars had their headlights on at night. The driver responded that most drivers believed that

headlights use too much petrol! Finally, she arrived at her hotel, a black marble monolith, grandiose and

decadent in its splendour, towering above the bay.

The goal of her four-day trip was to sample and select swatches of woven cotton from the mills in

and around Mumbai, to be used in the following season's youth-wear collection of shirts, trousers, and

underwear. She was thus treated with the utmost deference by her hosts, who were invariably Indian

factory owners or British agents for Indian mills. For three days she was ferried from one air-conditioned

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office to another, sipping iced tea or chilled lemonade, poring over leather-bound swatch catalogues,

which featured every type of stripe and design possible. On the fourth day, Jones made a request that

she knew would cause some anxiety in the camp. "I want to see a factory," she declared.

After much consultation and several attempts at dissuasion, she was once again ushered into a

limousine and driven through a part of the city she had not previously seen. Gradually, the hotel and the

Western shops dissolved into the background and Jones entered downtown Mumbai. All around was a

sprawling shantytown, constructed from sheets of corrugated iron and panels of cardboard boxes. Dust

flew in spirals everywhere among the dirt roads and open drains. The car crawled along the unsealed

roads behind carts hauled by man and beast alike, laden to overflowing with straw or city refusethe

treasure of the ghetto. More than once the limousine had to halt and wait while a lumbering white bull

crossed the road.

Finally, in the very heart of the ghetto, the car came to a stop. "Are you sure you want to this?"

asked her host. Determined not be faint-hearted, Jones got out the car.

White-skinned, blue-eyed, and blond, clad in a city suit and stiletto-heeled shoes, and carrying a

briefcase, Jones was indeed conspicuous. It was hardly surprising that the inhabitants of the area found

her an interesting and amusing subject, as she teetered along the dusty street and stepped gingerly

over the open sewers.

Her host led her down an alley, between the shacks and open doors and inky black interiors. Some

shelters, Jones was told, were restaurants, where at lunchtime people would gather on the rush mat

floors and eat rice together. In the doorway of one shack there was a table that served as a counter,

laden with ancient cans of baked beans, sardines, and rusted tins of fluorescent green substance that

might have been peas. The eyes of the young man behind the counter were smiling and proud as he

beckoned her forward to view his wares.

As Jones turned another corner, she saw an old man in the middle of the street, clad in a waist

cloth, sitting in a large bucket. He had a tin can in his hand with which he poured water from the bucket

over his head and shoulders. Beside him two little girls played in brilliant white nylon dresses, bedecked

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with ribbons and lace. They posed for her with smiling faces, delighted at having their photograph taken

in their best frocks. The men and women around her with great dignity and grace, Jones thought.

Finally, her host led her up a precarious wooden ladder to a floor above the street. At the top Jones

was warned not to stand straight, as the ceiling was just five feet high. There, in a room not 20 feet by

40 feet, 20 men were sitting at treadle sewing machines, bent over yards of white cloth. Between them

on the floor were rush mats, some occupied by sleeping workers awaiting their next shift. Jones learned

that these men were on a 24-hour rotation, 12 hours on and 12 hours off, every day for six months of

the year. For the remaining six months they returned to their families in the countryside to work the

land, planting and building with the money they had earned in the city. The shirts they were working on

were for an order she had placed four weeks earlier in London, an order of which she had been

particularly proud because of the low price she had succeeded in negotiating. Jones reflected that this

sight was the most humbling experience of her life. When she questioned her host about these

conditions, she was told that they were typical for her industryand most of the Third World, as well.

Eventually, she left the heat, dust and din to the little shirt factory and returned to the protected, air-

conditioned world of the limousine.

"What I've experienced today and the role I've played in creating that living hell will stay with me

forever," she thought. Later in the day, she asked herself whether what she had seen was an inevitable

consequence of pricing policies that enabled the British customer to purchase shirts at 12.99 instead

of 13.99 and at the same time allowed the company to make its mandatory 56 percent profit margin.

Were her negotiating skillsthe result of many years of trainingan indirect cause of the terrible

conditions she has seen?

Questions :

1.Once Jones returned to the United Kingdom, she considered her position and the options open to

her as a buyer for a large, publicly traded, retail chain operating in a highly competitive environment.

Her dilemma was twofold: Can an ambitious employee afford to exercise a social conscience in his or

her career? And can career-minded individuals truly make a difference without jeopardising their future?

Answer her.