Monday, October 20, 2008

Been there. Done that. Or American CEO's never learn from mistakes.

In this blog I cite some more evidence that American CEO's (hopefully not all of them) don't seem to learn from history. This evidence backs up my previous claims (see my blogs going back as far as 2005) that American CEO's, busy in their pursuit of self gratification, have thrown good business sense out with the baby and the bath water.

Today Delta Enterprises recalled almost 1.6 million cribs, made in China, Indonesia and Taiwan, on Monday after it said two babies died.

The other 985,000 cribs under recall were made in Indonesia and Taiwan.

The recall is one of the largest in U.S. history and follows another recall of 2,000 cribs, also made in China. A five-month-old infant suffocated after being trapped between the mattress and the crib side.

It comes about a year after a massive recall of toys tainted with lead paint and other dangerous material. Mattel Inc pulled more than 20 million toys made in the country.

More recently, milk contaminated with melamine killed at least four children and prompted Chinese-made products to be pulled from shelves around the world.

Even if these business executives don't care that they have taken American jobs away from Americans, and even if they don't care that they are putting the American public at risk, and even if they don't care that the costs of recovering from a massive product recall are huge, and even if they don't care that American consumers will see their companies as unsafe to buy from, how can they allow it to happen again and again?

I'm afraid that this says something very bad about the state of corporate America's business practices. It's time for a change. It's time for business ethics to take a top priority. This is apparently something that is very difficult for top executives so it is very likely that we will see other recalls and more serious product safety incidents in the future.