Barrick Gold Corporation's Unethical Practices: A Case Study

Desklib provides solved assignments and past papers to help students succeed.

1
ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
SBES 610

2
ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Table of Contents
Unethical Behaviour – Barrick Gold Corporation...........................................................................3
The solutions - Barrick Gold Corporation.......................................................................................4
Solution impact to the company, Stakeholders and financial bottom line......................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

3
ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Unethical Behaviour – Barrick Gold Corporation
Barrick Gold Corporation is one of the biggest gold mining industries in this world. It is a
Canadian company which operates from Toronto, its main headquarters. It operates its business
all over the world through four bases in four continents. Barrick Gold Corporation is currently
exploring new countries for its gold mining such as Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Australia,
Peru, Chile and Tanzania. In recent past years, the company has been accused of many unethical
practices in different and new places. Most of them are unethical environmental practices such
as chemical dumping which creates a lot of issues to the environment and local residents there.
The Mercury lead and Cyanide are the two major components which would be responsible for
damaging the environment there (Silawatsongvasin, 2016). The following are these significant
unethical practices which have been revealed in the past few years as well.
Papua New Guinea is one of the oldest destinations for the past many years as well, and 95% of
its operations have been handling by Barrick Gold Corporation. The company was accused of
doing most unethical practices there. The company was convicted of dumping tons of chemical
toxins into lands (Silawatsongvasin, 2016). Those chemicals contain mercury, lead and Cyanide
and these chemicals are considered to be very harmful to humans and their fertilities as well.
Many of the local residents there were getting sick because of those chemical dumping. The
human rights brought this case in light.
One more popular case with Barrick was one of the company’s security personnel was accused
of more than six gang rapes. The victim of these gang rapes was an innocent villager who
accidentally trespassed the mining territory (Kidluff et al., 2016). It turned into a big scandal
later for the company and Barrick has to face the violet armed villagers during the whole time of
that scandal as well but for the company that was not the first time for human right abuse
incident.
In the Africa branch of the company, the company was accused of colluding with local policies
and administration to harm the citizens of there. The innocent villagers often collected rocks in
the hope of getting some gold from the mining itself. It was a very critical incident, as well. The

4
ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
police forces shoot the innocent villagers without any warning to them with bullets and tear gas.
The conflict was taking place in 2011, and it reported that a total of 6 villagers were shot dead in
this critical incident (Piff et al., 2017). The villagers later explained that it was not the first time
when this type of event happened. The company used police forces from a long time now, which
indicates that the unethical practices from the company end have been running from the past
many years as well. Later the Barrick gold corporation came out and stated that they are feeling
sad about the death of the villagers but will not compensate any amount to the victims as well
and blamed poverty for the unexpected incident.
Barrick Gold was accused of torching 300 homes in Papua New Guinea for creating space for
their mining operations. This incident made the company Covalence’s 12th most unethical
company worldwide. It was reported that under the influence of Barrick gold, the landowners did
not provide enough time for the people who lived there for possessions. The report says that the
people who protest against the company were attacked by local police and armed guards as
well. Barrick Gold Corporation was involved in many accusations from last several years and it
also involved in accusing of manipulating land titles in Australia and Chile, this case was also a
highlight and hit the company reputation badly. In their Tanzania branch, the company was
accused of dumping toxic chemical waste, which includes arsenic at a high level, which was
very harmful to human health (Brisman et al., 2018).
The solutions - Barrick Gold Corporation
Barrick Gold Corporation is one of the most renowned gold mining; it needs no introduction
itself. The company and its operations all around the world have been seemed suspicious from
the recent few years because of all these incidents, the reputation of the company got affected
negatively, and the brand image ruined worldwide. Barrick Gold Corporation is a significantly
large scale organization, and these unethical practices brought the company into the limelight
for no good reasons (Blazey & Perkiss, 2016). Company management should become aware of
the situation and make some strategies to run the business without any unethical issues going on
in the company operations worldwide as well. The following are the solutions for Barrick Gold
Corporation to improve its services:

5
ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Social welfare programs will be proper steps for the company when it comes to enhancing its
brand image as well, among other countries (Attibrizi et al., 2016). Barrick Gold Corporation has
been running its business into many of those countries which are economically very poor or the
poverty rate is very high in comparison to the home country of the company itself. Poverty was
one of the biggest reasons for the shootout at Africa site of Barrick Gold Corporation if a
company run some social welfare programs in those countries including programs for clean
water, education, food and medication as well (Attibrizi et al., 2016). This step will be
beneficial in developing a positive image of the company all over the world. The incidents which
happened a few years back wholly ruined the image of the company because of its unethical
practices. It will be helpful to improve the reputation of the company, and it helps to increase
the bonding of the company to the locals itself which are really one of the most important things
when it comes to working with locals. The company should focus on developing strong
relationships with the locals to smoothly run their business there (Attibrizi et al., 2016).
Strategies for smugglers are required to Barrick Gold Corporation for running their business
without any issues there. Smugglers are the most significant risks to the market nowadays
because companies are running their business in those areas where the education level is kind of
low and the unemployment rates are very high which made it more complicated to manage the
local and international smugglers as well (Soona & Manning, 2018). The company was involved
in some of the scandals where the company was engaged within some severe conflicts with the
locals; the company should focus on making strong bonding with the locals and create effective
strategies for the smugglers to run the business more safely because gold mining is not an easy
task. The whole process of gold mining is an expensive process itself (Soona & Manning, 2018).
Follow employment policies are one of the essential requirements for the company when it
comes to managing the business in different lands as well. Barrick Gold Corporation was already
involved with many unethical issues in the past few years, and it will be helpful if the company
will do some practices according to the government employment policies of the respective
country. It will be useful for the company to run its business effectively (Soona & Manning,
2018). Every country has its own different employment policies, and if Barrick Gold Corporation
wants to run its business in those countries, the company should show respect to the lawsuit of
the country and follow them accordingly as well. It will be helpful to the company to track the

6
ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
employment procedure, which will be beneficial to hire some well-skilled workers at work. It
will not only help them to employ competent workers, but the government recognized workers
would be more loyal, safe and skilled to the company.
Solution impact to the company, Stakeholders and financial bottom line
Barrick Gold Corporation is a large scale organization of Canada but facing a lot of struggle
recently because of some of its unethical issues in which the company was involved. These
incidents completely ruined the global image of the company, and it was not a good sign for the
large scale company as well (Naeini et al., 2015). If the company run effective policies for
smugglers, welfare programs and good employment policies, it will surely be going to improve
the company’s brand value itself. It helps to strengthen the relationships with locals though
which will make a positive impact on the operational activities of the company.
Stakeholders will play an essential part in the company’s growth and success. Stakeholders
include customers, employees, management, suppliers, investors, financiers and other associated
people also. If Barrick Gold Corporation runs those strategies to improve the connection between
locals and the company, it will definitely impact on the stakeholders who are associated with the
company as well. The company already lost many customers because of its involvement in
unethical practices; welfare programs will be helpful to make the employees close with the
company. Company reputation will be increased; it will make happy to the investors. Thus, the
company is growing money will be developing and safe as well (Naeini et al., 2015).
Barrick Gold Corporation is a big company, and these strategies will be beneficial when it comes
to managing the financial bottom line of the company. These solutions will be reasonable to run
the business, and it will provide concrete solutions to the company’ commercial bottom line as
well. It gives robust financial solutions to the company (Benn et al., 2015).

7
ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
References
Silawatsongvasin., (2016). Top unethical business story. [Online] Silawatsongvasin, Available
at: https://silawatsongvasin.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/barrick-gold-corporation-abuse/
[Accessed on: June 18th, 2019]
Piff, P. K., Stancato, D. M., Côté, S., Mendoza-Denton, R., & Keltner, D. (2017). " Higher social
class predicts increased unethical behaviour”.
Kilduff, G. J., Galinsky, A. D., Gallo, E., & Reade, J. J. (2016). Whatever it takes to win: Rivalry
increases unethical behavior. Academy of Management Journal, 59(5), 1508-1534.
Brisman, A., McClanahan, B., South, N., & Walters, R. (2018). Too Dirty: Water and Pollution.
In Water, Crime and Security in the Twenty-First Century (pp. 13-52).
Blazey, P., & Perkiss, S. (2016). The empowerment of Papua New Guinea's tribespeople:
Overcoming the challenges of foreign investment projects. Australasian Journal of Regional
Studies, The, 22(2), 206.
Attibrizi, A., Ashar, K., & Pratomo, D. S. (2016). The Influence of Economic Growth To
Poverty and Its Relation To The Pro Poor In Indonesia. International Journal of Social and
Local Economic Governance, 2(2), 161-167.
Soona, J. M., & Manning, L. (2018). Food smuggling and trafficking: the key factors of
influence. Trends in food science & technology.
Naeini, A., Azali, P. R., & Tamaddoni, K. S. (2015). Impact of brand equity on purchase
intention and development, brand preference and customer willingness to pay higher
prices. Management and Administrative Sciences Review, 4(3), 616-626.
Benn, S., Teo, S. T., & Martin, A. (2015). Employee participation and engagement in working
for the environment. Personnel Review, 44(4), 492-510.

8
ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY