It is a matter of fact that the opinion about the Nestlé management and the company’s ways of doing business in accordance with ethical conduct and issues of morality, which has been formed in the heads of the developed nations, was a very negative one.

Former CEO of Nestlé Helmut Maucher wrote a book, called “Leadership in Action: Tough Minded Strategies from the Global Giant”, where he masterfully presented what he has witnessed on his own while being in charge of managing the company and also advantages and disadvantages of the management style Nestlé has chosen to operate within. He made the statement that “ethical decisions which injure a company’s ability to compete are actually immoral” (Helmut Maucher).

In an interview  Peter Brabeck-Letmathé, an official Maucher’s successor, the Chairman and former CEO of the Nestlé Group, was asked to express his opinion in accordance with the statement of Helmut Maucher. He commented the following on this statement taking into consideration how the baby formula has been marketed worldwide.

“I decided to eliminate the word ethical from Nestlé because it’s a word which divides people as opposed to uniting them.  Ethics, if you look into dictionaries, are a set of moral standards within a very specific unit of society, and ethical standards in Britain, Switzerland, Chile and China vary to a large extent.  And because this word is more likely to divide than to unite we don’t talk about ethics at Nestlé.  We talk about responsibility.  Our responsibility to our shareholders, our employees, and all other stakeholders.  It’s true that we do have a social responsibility that corresponds to a global company as opposed to the group interests of one community or another community” (Peter Brabeck-Letmathe). 

Cited Work:

“Nestlé Dumps Ethics at its AGM.”  Baby Milk Action. 27 July 2001.<http://www.babymilkaction.org/boycott/boyct29.html#3>