Business Ethics

SUBJECT : BUSINESS ETHICS

CASE -1

Joan, an employee of Great American Market, was warned about her excessive absenteeism several times, both verbally and in writing. The written warning included notice that “further violations will result in disciplinary actions,” including suspension or discharge.

A short time after the written warning was issued, Joan called work to say she was not going to be in because her babysitter had called in sick and she had to stay home and care for her young child. Joan’s supervisor, Sylvia, told her that she had already exceeded the allowed number of absences and warned that if she did not report to work, she could be suspended. When Joan did not report for her shift, Sylvia suspended her for fifteen days.

In a subsequent hearing, Joan argued that it was not her fault that the babysitter had canceled, and protested that she had no other choice but to stay home. Sylvia pointed out that Joan had not made a good faith effort to find an alternate babysitter, nor had she tried to swap shifts with a co-worker. Furthermore, Sylvia said that the lack of a babysitter was not a justifiable excuse for being absent.

Questions:

  1. Was the suspension fair? Give reason
  2. Did Joan act responsibly? Elaborate

 

CASE-2

You own a cement company, and deal with most the local contractors for cement, sand, etc. You have a reputation of high quality products, and for good customer service with your customers. Your foreman has just run the standard quality control tests you have performed regularly on your products. When the test results are ready, you discover that the new batch of product is 9% less durable than your usual material. It is still well above all industry standards and meets all building codes and requirements for the purposes for which it is intended, but it is, nevertheless, not up to your usual standards. Throwing it away would cost your company many thousands of dollars.
You decide to sell the cement anyway.

Questions:

  1. Should you tell your customers about the quality of the Product? Explain
  2. Should you discount the price? Give reasons
  3. What Should you tell your employees, so they will be knowledgeable with the customers?
  4. Would you use this cement on foundations for your own house? Support your answer with reasons

 

CASE-3

Fred, a 17-year employee with Sam’s Sauna, was fired for poor job performance and poor attendance, after accruing five disciplinary penalties within a 12-month period under the company’s progressive disciplinary policy. A week later, Fred told his former supervisor that he had a substance abuse problem.

Although there was no employee assistance program in place and the company had not been aware of Fred’s condition, their personnel director assisted Fred in obtaining treatment by allowing him to continue receiving insurance benefits and approved his unemployment insurance claim.

Fred subsequently requested reinstatement, maintaining that he had been rehabilitated since his discharge and was fully capable of being a productive employee. He pointed to a letter written by his treatment counselor, which said that his prognosis for leading a “clean, sober lifestyle” was a big incentive for him. Fred pleaded for another chance, arguing that his past problems resulted from drug addiction and that Sam’s Saunas should have recognized and provided treatment for the problem.

Sam’s Saunas countered that Fred should have notified his supervisor of his drug problem, and that everything possible had been done to help him receive treatment. Moreover, the company stressed that the employee had been fired for poor performance and absenteeism. Use of the progressive discipline policy had been necessary because the employee had committed a string of offenses over the course of a year, including careless workmanship, distracting others, wasting time, and disregarding safety rules.

Questions:

  1. Should Fred be reinstated? Support your Answer with reasons
  2. Was the company fair to Fred in helping him receive treatment? Explain
  3. Did the personnel director behave ethically toward Fred? Give Reason
  4. Did he act ethically for his company? Elaborate

 

CASE-4

In January of last year, the S.S. Vulgass, an oil tanker of the Big Dirty Oil Company ran around in the area just north of Vancouver, spilling millions of gallons of crude into the waters and onto the beaches of British Columbia and southern Alaska. The damage to the beaches and wildlife and consequently to the tourist industry, the ecology and the quality of life of the local residents is incalculable, but in any case will require many millions of dollars for even the most minimal clean-up.

The ship struck a small atoll, well-marked on the navigational maps, but it was a dark night and the boat was well off course. On further investigation, it was discovered that the Captain of the Vulgass, Mr. Slosh, had been drinking heavily. Leaving the navigation of the ship to his first mate, Mr. Mudd, he retired to his cabin, to “sleep it off.” Mr. Mudd had never taken charge of the ship before, and it is now clear that he misread the maps, misjudged the waters, maintained a speed that was inappropriate and the accident occurred. Subsequent inquiries showed that Captain Slosh had been arrested on two drunk driving convictions within months of the accident. The Vulgass itself, a double-hulled tanker, was long due for renovation and, it was suggested, would not have cracked up if the hull had been trebly reinforced, as some current tankers were.

U. Rich, the Chief Executive Officer of Big Dirty Oil declared the accident a “tragedy” and offered two million dollars to aid in the clean up. The Premier of British Columbia was outraged. Environmental groups began a consumer campaign against Big Dirty Oil, urging customers to cut up and send in their Big Dirty Oil credit cards in protest. In a meeting to the shareholders just last month, CEO Rich proudly announced the largest quarterly profit in the history of the Big Dirty Oil Company. He dismissed the protests as “the outpourings of Greenies and other fanatics” and assured the shareholders that his obligation was, and would always be, to assure the highest profits possible in the turmoil of today’s market.

Questions:

  1. Who is responsible for the tragedy & Why?
  2. Against whom should criminal charges be leveled & Why?
  3. What should be done, if anything, to punish the corporation itself?
  4. In your opinion, what should have been the decision of CEO?

 

 

Business Ethics

CASE STUDY

An official inquiry into a British doctor convicted of 15 murders is likely to conclude he may have killed up to 300 in total, the Daily Telegraph reported on Monday. If so, it would make him arguably the world’s best serial killer. The tribunal investigating the macabre career of Harold Shipman, nicknamed Doctor Death, is due to publish its findings this month, a spokesman said. Headed by Judge Janet Smith, it started off looking into around 800 suspect deaths before later narrowing the field down to just over 500. According to the paper, Smith’s inquiry will conclude that he killed about 300 patients during a medical career that began in early 1970s. The daily express said she would fix the final murder toll at precisely 297 deaths. He pleaded not guilty and his motives remains a mystery, although the Daily Telegraph said he had been diagnosed as a classic necrophiliac, murdering his victims simply for the pleasure he got from watching people die.

Answer the following question.

Q1. What do you find unethical in this case? Elucidate.

Q2. Explain an ordinary citizen’s role in the prevention of such crimes.

 

CASE STUDY

By way of introduction, let me state my (a freelance writer) most fundamental belief about organizational ethics: Ethics is not about answers. Instead, ethics is about asking questions. It’s about asking lots of questions and, maybe, if you’re lucky, even asking the right questions every now and then. In my experience, ethical organizations don’t shy away from asking potentially embarrassing questions, ones that might disturb the status quo. The need and value of doing so was brought home clearly in the Enron/Arthur Andersen scandals. Those were two organizations where, apparently, no one dared ask the tough questions that might actually have saved the companies. Now, thanks to those and related scandals, the good news is that corporations are routinely asking tough questions about financial reporting. Today, we’re all terribly conscious of the risks to the organization if we fail to question the numbers. Almost all of you are in the firing line in that regard, so there’s very little that I can tell you about the importance of assessing financial risk. I don’t have the level of knowledge that you have about financial accounting, but I do have some related experience that I’m going to draw on in my remarks today. As you know, I’m a professor of management, but today I am drawing on my experience as a member of the board of a NASDAQ company for some ten years. I served as a chairman for the Audit Committee until they actually required that you know something about auditing. Now I am on the Compensation and Governance Committee. I am proud of the record of our little company: We have been squeaky clean from day one. As a matter fact, when we went public 10 years ago, we had little buttons that we all wore that said, “We be clean.” This is because we had a member of the board named Robert Townsend, the man who created the Avis Corp., and he was not only one of the great management thinkers but also one of the most ethical business leaders this country has known. He insisted upon spotless ethics in everything we did, and it became part of the culture of the company. If there was a nickel on the books that was in question, we have always interpreted accounting rules in the most conservative way. We have never had anyone question our numbers and I hope to God we never will.

But the story doesn’t stop there. Recently our board undertook a thorough audit of the human resources function of our organization. The recent negative exposure that companies like Nike and LeviStrauss have experienced concerning working conditions in their plants in Asia convinced us that consumer products companies run considerable risk in this arena. There was a bit of resistance to undertaking this audit. In fact, as at most companies, the eyes of our HR people glazed over whenever we used the word ethics. We are a small company, so we don’t have somebody who was an ethics officer per se, so it fell to the board to raise these questions. Questions for the Compensation and Governance Committee Once we started to do so we quickly came to realize that there was an entire raft of HR associated issues that we had to monitor if we were to assure our shareholders we had done adequate risk assessment in the organization. Our board members are not experts in this arena, but we realized that we had to be able to assess risks in all the corporation’s major humancapital management systems: selection and recruitment processes, training policies and programs, performance appraisal systems, executive compensation, sales and other forms of incentive compensation, base pay and benefit determination, talent management systems (including manpower and succession planning), labor relations, and so forth. We had to ask if there were appropriate methods and analytical programs in place that monitor for age, sex, and gender discrimination; employee attitudes and morale; talent procurement and retention? We wondered to what extent potential employees saw our company as a great place to work. We started having to pay attention to health and safety, termination and downsizing policies, demographics about who gets promoted, raises, bonuses, and turnover. As we went on, we increasingly sought to discover the extent to which the company was on top of liabilities in those areas from a measurement and analytical perspective. With regard to all major HR systems, our board began to ask the following kinds of questions: Is there a formal system or process in place? Has the system been validated? Is it clearly understood and communicated? Has the system had unintended effects? Has it been analyzed for adverse effects, for example, possible discriminatory impact on legally protected groups? Each time we asked questions, we had to go back to learn more, we had to ask more sophisticated questions. Some questions we asked with regard to leadership development and talent management were things we thought the board would never get involved in. We started asking if there was a formal assessment of the key capabilities/talents needed in the company. We asked if retention rates were monitored? Did the monitoring include an analysis of criticality? Did it include competitive practices, capabilities, and performance? To what degree was the expertise of key people captured by the organization? Were there non compete agreements with key technical people? Does our reward system lock key contributors into the organization? We didn’t have a clue what answers we were looking for. This was a matter of constantly asking every possible question that we could think of. For example, when we looked at the succession planning system, we asked if the system was formal, who was involved, and how it was related to business strategy. We asked what metrics were used and were they related to assessment of needed capabilities? How do we monitor for derailment? Is there a system of mentoring and coaching? Is it seeing as effective and fair? That led us into questions about training policy: Who participates? What are the purposes of the programs? How are they evaluated? How are they related to business strategy? How do these programs deal with ethical and legal issues? Are there unintended gender, race, or age biases in who attends? Then, we started looking at selection procedures: Did we use validated instruments for identifying the “right” people? How were these related to business strategy? What methods were used? To what extent is an effort made at branding our company as a great place to work? Finally, we looked at retention policies: the retention packages for key personnel, how we are monitoring satisfaction, whether the packages are tied to system performance appraisal, and what metrics are used to identify key personnel, and so on.

Answer the following question.

Q1. How the writer defines the organizational ethics. Comment.

Q2. What are the benefits of routinely asking tough questions about the related issues? Discuss.

 

CASE STUDY

As per a judicial order, a minister was ordered to pay a fine of Rs. 15 lakhs for allotting 15 petrol pumps, while another minister was fined Rs. 60 lakhs for causing a loss to the exchequer by allotting 52 shops or kiosks to some favorites.

Answer the following question.

Q1. What exactly are the improper actions that you consider unethical?

Q2. Judicial orders in the interests of the nation are a must. Discuss this statement.

 

CASE STUDY

Since the story broke that VW deliberately buried emissions results in its software, plenty has been written about this case of corporate malfeasance, perhaps more than any since Enron. The Volkswagen brand crisis seems fairly straightforward to me. With no mission or values, I contend there is no hope for achieving VW’s goals ethically and in a way to sustain the company. Some confuse mission statements with other corporate communications that are really marketing taglines and slogans. Mission statements are not typically external documents, used to convince others of the value the company creates. Rather the most effective mission statements are largely internal documents, guiding people within an organization about its purpose and paired with a values statement so that organizations have clarity about both their purpose and how they are going to achieve it. Volkswagen doesn’t have a mission statement. There were values stated in the 2006 annual report, but they disappeared in future years. A vision statement dated June 2011 pronounced: “By working in cooperation with politicians and society, the world of business can play a key part when it comes to combating serious environmental issues and social inequality. Volkswagen’s main contribution to the project is related to sustainable mobility.” An analysis by Strategic Management Insight 2013 could find only this goal in lieu of a mission statement: “The Group’s goal is to offer attractive, safe, and environmentally sound vehicles which can compete in an increasingly tough market and set world standards in their respective class.” SMI found Volkswagen Group’s goal lacked any statement of values or philosophy, did not mention customers, employees, or technology. It achieved a score of 1.6 out of a possible 4.5 in SMI’s evaluation. By 2014, Volkswagen’s annual report talked about its strategy. Still no mission, no values: “Our Strategy 2018 focuses on positioning the Volkswagen Group as a global economic and environmental leader among automobile manufacturers. We have defined four goals that are intended to make Volkswagen the most successful, fascinating and sustainable automaker in the world by 2018.” These goals related to innovation, customer satisfaction, sales, profits and employee retention, but say nothing about core values. In 2010, Volkswagen joined 21 other German automakers in 2010 in agreeing to a “mission statement for responsible actions in business.” Yet it sill operated without a clear core set of defined beliefs or values to guide VW’s work, or a motivational or reward system aligned with a mission. While the six principles seem well intentioned ecologically, without a well designed system to support this goal, Volkswagen missed achieving it, and in fact, behaved in a way counter to its stated aspiration. Employees everywhere roll their eyes through discussions of mission, purpose, and values. For many, uninterested in the larger system they operate within professionally, they seem bored sitting in long meetings listening to what are for them buzzwords that get in the way of the real work to be done in any company. Volkswagen was the largest automaker in the world in 2011, offering 13 brands from Audi to Porsche. That was a few strategies and vision statements ago. Today Volkswagen’s share price is half what it was a year ago, following a precipitous stock price drop when news of the scandal broke. It’s recently appointed CEO has been reported to take the same misleading software design approach during his time at Porsche. No surprise, given that he was working in the same purposeless company, without an articulated set of values to guide his work. Much more will likely be written about VW and, as it not is its first corporate scandal; perhaps the company’s epitaph is in the works. 

Bottom line: no mission, no hope.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Discuss why the effective mission statements should be paired with a values statement.

Q2. Give your views on the case and sustainability.

 

Business Ethics

CASE STUDY 

General Motors, the world’s largest automobile manufacturer, accused Japan of currency manipulation giving its automakers a huge competitive advantage in the US. market and causing significant harm to the US auto industry. The company charged that Japan’s weak ‘yen policy’ gave its exporters an outright annual subsidy of up to 12,000 dollars per vehicle exported to the United States, giving an expected windfall of two billion dollars to Japan’s automakers “This subsidy has both facilitated the expansion of Japanese companies in the US and succeeded in keeping American-built automobiles out of Japan,” GM’s chief economist Mustafa Mohatarem told a congressional hearing. The impact of Japan’s sustained currency manipulation is a keyreason for a plethora of problems facing US-owned automakers, Mohatarem told a US-Japan trade hearing held by the House Representatives’ ways and means committee “However, it is frustrating, really unbelievable, to many of us in this business and the American manufacturing sector that the Japanese government’s extraordinary $420 billion currency manipulation program has gone unquestioned and unchallenged, while China has become the sole focus of attention as the threat to American competitiveness,” he said. Lawmakers criticized the government for not being tough with Japan on its currency policy and sought an explanation from David Loevinger, deputy assistant secretary at the US treasury, among other government officials present at the hearing.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Is there any ethical issue involved in this case? If so, explain the same.

Q2. What remedies do you suggest to ensure a proper approach? Discuss.

 

CASE STUDY

Prohibition is good and women would appreciate a policy of prohibition. However some state governments may scrap prohibition on the grounds that (i) the adjoining states do not observe prohibition, hence people visit those states to quench their desire for the beverage (ii) the existence of illicit distillation and the difficulty in stopping this (iii) the strain on government resources for implementing prohibition, including the loss of revenue from excise duty.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Are the grounds shown in the above case ethically justifiable? Explain.

Q2. In your opinion what are the benefits of prohibition. Discuss.

 

Case Study

Joan, an employee of Great American Market, was warned about her excessive absenteeism several times, both verbally and in writing. The written warning included notice that “further violations will result in disciplinary actions,” including suspension or discharge. A short time after the written warning was issued, Joan called work to say she was not going to be in because her babysitter had called in sick and she had to stay home and care for her young child. Joan’s supervisor, Sylvia, told her that she had already exceeded the allowed number of absences and warned that if she did not report to work, she could be suspended. When Joan did not report for her shift, Sylvia suspended her for fifteen days. In a subsequent hearing, Joan argued that it was not her fault that the babysitter had canceled, and protested that she had no other choice but to stay home. Sylvia pointed out that Joan had not made a good faith effort to find an alternate babysitter, nor had she tried to swap shifts with a co-worker. Furthermore, Sylvia said that the lack of a babysitter was not a justifiable excuse for being absent.

Answer the following question.

  1. Was the suspension fair?
  1. Did Joan act responsibly?

 

 

CASE STUDY

Most people want to be ethical — and consider themselves to be. But incidents ranging from stolen library books to rogue trading illustrate that many people do not act as ethically as they want to, or as they think they do. “With all the evidence to support rational, good choices in the workplace or the marketplace, why don’t we all behave that way?” said Ann Skeet, director of leadership ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Skeet gave an introduction to a May 11 forum called, “The Behavioral Movement: What Business Professionals Should Know About Human Nature,” sponsored by the Business Ethics Partnership of the Markkula Center. Two speakers addressed what we know about why people behave unethically – and how the conditions that contribute to this behavior may be particularly acute in high-pressure environments like Silicon Valley. “The culture of Silicon Valley is different than in most other places,” said Hersh Shefrin, the Mario L. Belotti Professor of Finance at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business and a pioneer in the field of behavioral finance. “This is a risk-taking culture and a culture where goals are set very high.” This can make Silicon Valley workers especially vulnerable to the pressures that can lead to unethical decisions. For example, the increasing use of global teams, which can require phone calls early in the morning and late at night as well as regular hours in the office, may contribute to fatigue – a risk factor for poor decision-making. Still, Shefrin said, “we’re not as unique as we think we are – just more so.” Workers in Silicon Valley are subject to the same psychological issues as workers anywhere else. For example, all workers have blind spots, said Ann E. Tenbrunsel, professor in the College of Business Administration at the University of Notre Dame and the Rex and Alice A. Martin Research Director of the Institute for Ethical Business Worldwide. She addressed the psychology of ethical decision making, or “why people behave unethically despite the best intentions.” There have been significant efforts to improve ethics: at the regulatory level; at the organizational level, with millions spent on training; and at the educational level, with ethics being infused into the curriculum at many universities, Tenbrunsel said. Still, the headlines announcing bad behavior keep coming. “We haven’t taken the psychology of the decision maker into account,” Tenbrunsel said. She listed four ethical blind spots that contribute to poor decision making — ethical illusions, ethical fading, dangerous reward systems and motivated blindness — and elaborated on the first two. Ethical illusions are based on “illusions of our own ethicality,” Tenbrunsel said. She cited studies showing that library books on ethics – presumably checked out by people who think about ethics – are stolen more often than non-ethics books. And when people are asked to rate how honest they are, a majority of people rate themselves above average, which is statistically not possible. “We really seem to engage in hyperinflation about things related to morality and ethicality,” Tenbrunsel said. “If everyone thinks their companies are ethical, we don’t do a good job of really trying to find the problems.” It helps to think of three stages of the decision-making process, Tenbrunsel said: prediction, action and recollection. Before making a decision, people generally predict that they will act in accordance with their values. When it comes to taking action, that is not always what happens. But after the fact, “we remember that we did better than we did,” Tenbrunsel said. Why don’t people behave as they predict they will? One reason, said Tenbrunsel, is that prediction involves high-level ideals, whereas the action phase is more about the details and what is feasible at that particular moment. Forces such as hunger, fatigue and fear come into play, for example, and may overwhelm idealistic plans. “The body and mind’s goal is to mitigate it,” Tenbrunsel said. Ethical fading, the second blind spot Tenbrunsel discussed, happens when a person making a decision doesn’t view the decision as one that involves ethics. People use financial criteria to make financial decisions and legal criteria to make legal decisions, for example. So if a decision can be categorized as something other than an ethical one, it makes it easy to not consider ethics. Language plays a role in this area, as well: For example, a decision about “runoff” may be viewed differently than one about “pollution.” Shefrin continued the conversation by examining rogue trading, an example of how “finance and psychology and ethics all interconnect.” Because trading involves taking risks, it is useful to understand the psychology behind risk-taking. For example, most people will choose a sure gain over a smaller chance to win a larger amount. But they will choose the risk of a large loss over a sure loss. “Three of the most important emotions associated with what happens when you face a risk are fear, hope and aspiration,” Shefrin said. “People who are excessively fearful tend not to take risks that are worth taking in an actuarial sense, and people who are excessively hopeful tend to shoot for the stars when it’s not appropriate. In a situation like the rogue trading cases, traders find themselves in a situation where the pressures to succeed are so great that they take imprudent risks.” In addition to the psychology of the individuals involved, the strength of corporate processes and the way corporate culture encourages or discourages risk-taking play a role. “Strong corporate cultures that include an ethical dimension can help deal with the vulnerabilities,” Shefrin said. “The tone always starts at the top.”

Answer the following question.

Q1. Why imprudent risks are to be taken for great success. Explain

Q2. Debate the three stages of the decision-making process.

 

Business Ethics

CASE STUDY

San Francisco: Waste from computers, televisions and other devises used in the United States is polluting environment and exposing workers to toxic chemicals in region of India and China where discarded electronics are dismantled, a study released on Wednesday said. Researchers detected high levels of toxic metals in more than 70 samples collected in March from industrial waste, river sediment, soil and groundwater around the southern Chinese City of Guiyu and the suburbs of New Delhi, according to the report by Greenpeace International. Dust from dismantling workshops contained the highest level of contaminants. “The extent of the contamination is even worse than we had feared. The levels analyzed are really scary and very concerning,” said Ted Smith, the founder of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition who chairs the computer Take Back Campaign, which promotes electronics recycling.

Most of the electronics collected in the United States for recycling are supplied to China, India and other Asian countries where worker protection and environmental safety standards are weak, Smith said. The researchers chose to collect samples from the Mayapuri and Burari areas of New Delhi because the two regions are known to dismantle discarded American electronics to recover valuable metals such s gold, platinum and silver. The samples collected from those areas contained elevated levels of heavy metals including lead, tin, copper, cadmium and antimony.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Give your viewpoints on the above case.

Q2. Why the surplus electronics items of United States are accepted by India and China? Explain in detail.

 

CASE STUDY

Sick of angry campaign ads invading your living room? Dismayed by the vulgarity and poisonous political messages of the primary season? Don’t change the channel quite yet. As USA head into the general election in 2016, there are things to learn from political communications, and it is our duty as voters to cut through the rhetoric in order to vet these applicants for the most important job in the country. The American process for electing public officials is born out of the ethical ideal of creating an informed electorate. It is the campaign’s task to introduce the candidate and inform the voters about the candidate’s background, his or her positions on the issues, and how the candidate is different from the opponent. Political communications serve to inform the electorate, as long as the content of the communication is true, fair, and relevant. It is our task as voters to analyze all political communications to make sure that they meet this standard. It should be of no surprise to anyone that campaign communications often distort the truth. For example, who can forget Donald Trump’s television ad showing hundreds of immigrants streaming across the border. The only problem was that the video was taken in Morocco. Bernie Sanders came under fire when an ad about endorsements quoted favourable comments about him from a newspaper that had actually endorsed Clinton. Truth is the first task of campaign communications, but something true can still be unfair. We need to be wary of statements or facts which, while true, are being used out of context. Clinton was recently criticized for taking Sanders’ voting record out of context when she claimed in Michigan that he had voted against the auto bailout. Sanders had in fact supported a standalone bill bailing out the auto industry, but voted against the larger bill that not only included support for the auto industry but the banking and insurance industries as well. Whenever a candidate is criticized for casting a vote, we need to make sure we know the whole story. Not only should political ommunications be truthful, and fair, but they should also be relevant to the issues in the race. We have all seen political attacks that talk about a candidate’s youthful indiscretions, private marital troubles, or about problematic behavior on the part of a candidate’s family member or associate. The question of whether these types of attacks are relevant to the issues in the campaign can only be decided by the individual voter. For example, was the fact that Melania Trump posed for a risqué “British GQ” photo shoot 15 years ago, before she was married to Donald Trump, really relevant to the issues facing our country today? Is Bill Clinton’s past infidelity relevant to Hillary Clinton’s ability to govern? We must question whether a spot is designed purely to appeal to our base emotions (such as disgust at a family member’s behavior) or whether the content of the ad is pertinent to a legitimate interest in the race.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Give an overview of the case.

Q2. In your opinion, what are the unethical issues being used in election campaign? Discuss in detail.

 

CASE STUDY

The new CEO of a corporation learns that he has inherited problems with growth and profitability. A fourday workweek and, eventually, layoffs prove necessary. Who is the CEO obligated to inform and when? George Anderson was just a few months beyond his 40th birthday on the day he became CEO of Astratech Communications international (ACI). What an upper! He was still basking in the glow of his good fortune, eager to try out his skills as the CEO. He hoped to get the chairmanship one day when the company’s founder, Mike Marcus, decided to step down. Life was good. ACI was a leading supplier of fiber optic transceiver components for the telecommunications industry. It sold to companies like Alcatel, Northern Telecom, and Ericsson, who put ACI’s components into the lightwave equipment they manufactured. The company was based in Irvine, Calif., a great place to live, work, and raise a family. ACI’s annual sales were around $500 million with 2,500 employees in locations in Mexico and Scotland, in addition to its Southern California headquarters. All of ACI’s hourly employees in the United States and abroad were represented by the IBEW, a union with a history of good working relationships with management. The Mexican operation was launched to take advantage of lower labor costs and close proximity to headquarters. The Scotland plant gave the company relief from onerous European tariffs. Both offshore facilities enjoyed excellent employee relations. After settling into his new position, George busied himself identifying the major issues facing the company. Coming in, he had realized that ACI’s growth and profitability were problems, but he wasn’t sure if the source was the management team, product development, marketing and sales, or something else. After several months, George was clear that it wasn’t the people. Sure, there were a few problem areas, and some employees seemed a bit too comfortable. But the main issue was a lack of focus and a general weakness in the business systems required in this fast paced industry. There was no clear vision of what ACI wanted to be and no acceptable plan on how to get there. What was it that someone said? “If you don’t know where you are going, all roads will lead you there.” To address this weakness, George implemented a task force made up of middle managers from all the various disciplines, as well as the executive team. He chaired the task force because he believed strongly that CEOs shouldn’t delegate strategy. When it came to business systems, the problem seemed to be a lack of adequate cost accounting. The company didn’t know its individual product costs to any reasonable degree of accuracy. To address this challenge, George brought in a new chief financial officer. But just as George was beginning to feel optimistic about where ACI was going, he got a phone call from sales to tell him that Alcatel was canceling its backlog. Apparently, Alcatel’s customers were slowing their acquisition of new equipment, and Alcatel seized that opportunity to shift all of its business to a French competitor of ACI’s that had a reputation for higher product quality. George’s first call was to the chairman. To his surprise, Mike handled it well, voicing his empathy and support. But clearly, George was expected to take action quickly. He decided that one way of avoiding a layoff was to implement a fourday workweek. That spread the pain evenly among all employees. George called his executive team together to tell them the bad news and to get the necessary action underway. Next, he went to discuss the issue with union leadership. The regional head of the union also the local steward was in George’s office before lunch with a stern look on his face. “Look, George, you’re the new kid on the block, so we don’t think this setback was your doing. No one likes to lose part of their paycheck, but your plan treats management the same as the blue collar workers, so you’ve got our support. We want to give you a chance to act. If we don’t like what you’re doing, we’ll be back.” The fourday workweek was implemented. Without being told, the entire management staff knew that they got four day’s pay, but they were expected to be there five. After about six weeks, the lower costs began to kick in, and ACI was again holding its head above water…barely.

Answer the following question.

Q1. What were the reasons for the business downturn? Comment.

Q2. How did new CEO Mr. George Anderson respond to the business downturn? Discuss, what was ethical in his decision.

 

CASE STUDY

Aristotle was the most practical and businessoriented of all philosophers who asked ethical questions. Now you may scoff at the idea that a person who’s been dead for nearly 2,400 years has anything practical to say about the modern organizations in which you all work. But, let me see if I can give you an example of his doing so that will at least get your attention. Aristotle tells us that acts are not ethical if they are accidental. What he means by this, in modern terms, is that, if I am driving drunk and I hit a water hydrant, knock it off its pedestal and cause a 20foot geyser which, in turn, puts out a fire in an adjacent house, I cannot claim to have committed a virtuous act. To illustrate the ethical centrality of right motivation, Aristotle cites a fragment of brilliant dialogue from a lost play by Euripides, Character A: I killed my mother, brief is my report. Character B: Were you both willing, and neither she nor you? It is difficult to set aside the relevance of this 2,500yearold exchange to the current debate about the morality of physicianassisted suicide, but let’s focus for a minute on why Aristotle cited it. He wanted to call our attention to the significance of motivation as a factor in ethical analysis. In this minicase, Euripides implies three different situations, each quite morally distinct from the others: In the first situation a mother is murdered, as we would say “in cold blood” by her child. In the second situation, a mother’s request for mercy killing is granted by an unloving child who is only too happy to comply. In the third situation, the mother, who is perhaps dying from some terrible disease, asks her child to end her pain and, in great sadness and reluctance, he grants his mother’s wish. In Aristotle’s terms, only the latter situation contains the possibility of ethical virtue. Although the moral choices we face in HR, thank God, are far less dramatic than these, Aristotle tells us that motivation is a powerful indicator of the degree to which virtue is present in all of our social acts. I have gone to Aristotle because he is particularly interested in defining the principles of ethical leadership. In his Ethics he sets out a series of practical and analytical ethical tests (or examinations), and at the end of these, he concludes that the role of the leader is to create the environment in which all members of an organization have the opportunity to realize their own potential. He says that the ethical role of the leader is not to enhance his own power but to create the conditions under which the followers can achieve their potential. It was this point Jefferson was paraphrasing in the Declaration of Independence when he noted the goal of the new country being founded in 1776 was to provide conditions in which all citizens could pursue happiness. In Aristotle’s terms, happiness means the realization of one’s potential. Aristotle said a nation succeeds to the extent that its leaders create the opportunity and conditions under which its people can develop and grow. Of course Aristotle never heard of a large business or corporation. Nonetheless he did raise a set of questions that corporate leaders who wish to behave ethically need to ask themselves: Am I behaving in a virtuous way? How would I want to be treated if I were a member of this organization? What form of social contract would allow all our members to develop their full potential in order that they may each make their greatest contribution to the good of the whole? To what extent are there real opportunities for all employees to learn and to develop their talents and potential? To what extent do all employees participate in the decisions that affect their own work? To what extent do all employees participate in the financial gain resulting from their own ideas and efforts? If we translate Aristotle into these modern terms, he provides us with a set of ethical questions to determine the extent to which an organization provides an environment conducive to human growth and fulfillment. And, Aristotle would say, not only does an ethical leader create that environment but, he or she does do so consciously, and not coincidentally. Motivation is important. Miami hoteliers cannot claim credit for sunny days, and leaders in Silicon Valley get no ethical credit for providing jobs that are accidentally developmental. Just because working with computers may be an inherently a developmental task, one is not necessarily a marvelous employer for providing people with that opportunity. Aristotle also asks the extent to which we as leaders observe decent limits on our own power in order to allow others to lead and develop. What he’s saying is that leadership is inherently such a valuable thing in terms of our growth that, if leaders take all the opportunities to lead for themselves, and don’t give others the chance to lead, they are denying their followers the possibility of growth. That’s why he says leadership should be shared, rotated, so that everybody has the ability to participate in it. He says that too many leaders turn their people into passive recipients of their moral feats, and there is nothing inherently ethical about that. In essence, here’s the question that Aristotle asks leaders to ask themselves. To what extent do I consciously make an effort to provide learning opportunities to everyone who works for me? To what extent do I encourage full participation by all my people in the decisions affecting their own work? To what extent do I allow them to lead in order to grow? To what extent do I measure my own performance as a manager or leader both in terms of my effectiveness in realizing economic goals and, equally, in terms of using my practical wisdom to create conditions in which my people can seek to fulfill their own potential in the workplace? Very few CEOs that I work with would be able to respond to those questions with positive selfassessments. Indeed, I think many successful and admired corporate leaders consciously reject such Aristotelian measures of performance as inappropriate, impractical, and irrelevant to the task their boards have hired them to do, which is to create wealth. They say their responsibility is to their shareholders, not their employees, and if the social responsibility of employee development interferes with profit making then tradeoffs must be made. Aristotle would answer that virtuous leaders have responsibilities to both their owners and their workers. If there’s a conflict between the two, it is the leaders’ duty to create conditions in which those interests can be made the same. He would remind us that while most potential leaders measure themselves solely in terms of their effectiveness in obtaining and maintaining power, virtuous ones also measure themselves by ethical standards of justice. He was talking about political leaders but, by extension, in the modern business context, it is appropriate that executives are evaluated not only in terms of their effectiveness in generating wealth for shareholders but also by the opportunity they provide for their followers to find meaning and opportunity for development in their workplaces.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Aristotle told “Acts are not ethical if they are accidental” Explain with examples.

Q2. As per Aristotle, what should be the qualities of corporate leaders? Discuss.

 

CASE STUDY

US researchers said on Monday they have created a new human embryonic stem cell by fusing an embryonic stem cell. They hope their method will provide a way to create tailormade treatments from scratch, using cloning technology. That would mean generating the valuable cells without using a human egg, and without creating a human embryo, which some people, including President George W. Bush, find objectionable. But the team, led by stem cell expert Douglas Melton, Kevin Eggan and others at Harvard Medical School, stress in a report to be published in next Friday’s issue of the journal Science that their method is not yet perfect. Stem cells are the body’s master cells, used to continually regenerate tissues, organs and blood. Those taken from daysold embryos are considered the most versatile. They can produce any kind of tissue in the body. Doctors hope to use embryonic stem cells as a source of perfectly matched transplants to treat diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease and some injuries. But because some people object to the destruction of or experimentation on a human embryo, US law restricts the use of federal funds for this kind of research. It is a hot debate in Congress and several bills have been offered for consideration that would either relax the federal restrictions or tighten them even more. Melton has complained about the restrains and, like other experts, has used private funding to pursue stem cell work. He and other experts say they only want to understand how to reprogram an ordinary cell and hope the use of human embryo would only be a shortterm and interim step to learning how to manufacture these cells. The Harvard team says they have taken a big step in this direction. Currently, embryonic stem cells are either taken from embryos left over from fertility clinics, or generated using a cloning technology called nuclear transfer. This requires taking the nucleus out of an egg cell and replacing it with the nucleus of an adult cell, called a somatic cell, f from the person to be treated. This reprograms the egg, which starts dividing as if it had been fertilized by a sperm.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Give an overview of the above case

Q2. What is cloning technology? Explain.

Q3. Explain the unethical aspects of cloning.

Q4. Discuss necessity and ethical aspects of cloning.

 

CASE STUDY 

The notion of corporate moral responsibility has expanded significantly in the past few decades, according to Manuel Velasquez, chair of the Santa Clara University Management Department. The Charles Dirksen Professor in Ethics provided a theoretical look at the topic in a presentation for the June 13, 2006, meeting of the Business and Organizational Ethics Partnership. Katie Tillman Buck, associate director of corporate affairs and ethics at Affymetrix, followed Velasquez with a description of how her company, a leading supplier of genetic diagnostic research equipment, approaches corporate moral responsibility. Moral responsibility can be interpreted two ways, Velasquez said: in terms of obligation or duty; or in terms of culpability. “The notion of moral responsibility that we have, both in the law and in our everyday lives, is fairly straight forward,” Velasquez explained. “A person or an agent or a party is morally responsible for an injury if 1) they caused it, 2) they knew what they were doing, and 3) they could have prevented it.” This concept applies to corporations as well. Traditionally, a company was morally responsible for injuries it inflicted provided the same three factors held. However, the idea of moral responsibility has been expanding over the years. “During the second half of the 20th century, a company was held responsible for injuries users of its products inflicted on themselves,” he said. “The company is held morally responsible provided they knew about it in some way, or should have known about it, and it could have prevented it.” This interpretation expanded even further with the idea of strict liability. “A company is now held responsible also for injuries users inflicted on themselves, even when the company could not have prevented it,” Velasquez said. Over the last couple of years, a company’s scope of moral responsibility has even extended upstream (to suppliers) as well as downstream (to endusers). “During the last 20 years or so, there are a number of companies that have been held morally responsible not legally but in the eyes of the public have been held morally responsible for injuries that their suppliers have inflicted on some third party,” he noted. Companies in the apparel industry, toy manufacturing, electronics assembly, and others have been perceived as accessories to the mistreatment of workers by their suppliers, even if they have not been directly involved. Many now try to prevent that by doing onsite inspections. Downstream responsibility has also expanded in the last two decades or so. “Companies have been held morally responsible for injuries which they did not inflict on somebody else, injuries in which their product was not defective, but injuries in which one of their customers used one of their products to inflict an injury on a third party,” he said. Gun manufacturers and bar owners are two notable examples. “It’s odd when you think about it, because this differs pretty substantially from that first notion of moral responsibility with which we began, where a party is morally responsible for an injury they inflict on another person knowingly and being able to prevent it. This is a very stretched notion of moral responsibility that’s being used today,” he said. This brings up two theoretical questions: 1) To what extent is a company morally responsible for the way in which its customers use its products? 2) How can a company minimize its exposure to this kind of moral responsibility? The second question is commonly dealt with before the fact by monitoring who buys the products (for example, checking the background of potential gun buyers) or after the fact by using publicists and lawyers. But as one attendee of the BOEP meeting noted, many companies do not want to answer the first question because they are afraid of the answer. By asking the question, they become responsible for monitoring their product’s use. Such reluctance has not been the case with the Santa Clara, Calif., company Affymetrix. “There’s this awareness in the general community as well as the genetics community that genetic information is powerful,” Buck acknowledged. The Affymetrix technology, for example, can put 6.5 million discrete pieces of genetic information on a single chip. “It can be used for a lot of great things, and it can probably be used for a few bad things.” According to Buck, Affimetrix understands that exploring the ethics of how its chips are used is ultimately in the company’s best interests. “Our interests looking into these issues of moral responsibility, looking at these ethical issues, really melds very well with what our business goals are,” Buck explained. “We’re at the stage where not being thorough, getting embroiled in something that just feels bad to people, would be bad for us and would be bad for the technology’s ability to address all those markets we want to be in.” The company has taken a proactive approach to these concerns, setting up an Ethics Advisory Committee to address moral and ethical issues. The committee consists of seven external participants who have varied backgrounds, including law, anthropology, genetics, bioethics, and sociology. They offer independent, noncorporate views on the issues. “They’re very different. We actually picked them not with the idea that they wouldn’t get along, but with the idea that they wouldn’t agree. Our goal at these meetings is to really get everything out on the table,” she said. The committee meets four times a year. “We always have two or three executives in the room, as well as a selection of people from throughout the organization,” Buck said. Her goal over the past five years has been to embed the idea in the corporate culture that ethics are important and that this committee is available to people throughout the organization. Discussions vary at the meetings. “A lot of what we talk about at the Ethics Advisory Committee is completely hypothetical. It’s becoming less hypothetical over time. It’s becoming more and more realistic now,” she said. “But we’re really trying to get ahead of the ball.” One issue the committee has looked at has been newborn screeningthe practice of automatically testing newborns for existing diseases and conditions before they leave the hospital. Even though Affymetrix products are not currently used in newborn screening, they could be, so the committee has addressed issues such as informed consent, genetic privacy, storage of samples, the need for federal regulations, etc. Putting ethics into practice The committee has discussed less hypothetical situations as well. For example, the company received a proposal from an Israeli company that intended to use an Affymetrix chip to test for disorders common to that population, including TaySachs disease. It included several other disorders, as well, both treatable and untreatable, in addition to late onset diseases, with no indication of when the testing would be done. The proposal also indicated that the company intended to market a Palestinian chip, and even a Swedish chip. The red flags this project raised (possible geopolitical implications and questionable genetics, among others) concerned Affymetrix. Additionally, Affymetrix determined that the company was more of a marketing firm than a genetic testing company, so they declined to be involved with the project. “That wasn’t really the first thing we wanted to do coming out of the gate, so we passed on that,” Buck said. The constant emergence of new markets for genetic technology means new questions every day. “This is a new industry. This is new research people are doing,” Buck noted. Taking part not only in internal discussions about moral responsibility, but national discussions as well, “being informed on what’s going on and weighing in on the things that are particular to the kinds of data that we’re generating” is a way of helping shape the moral climate of the industry as well.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Give your views on corporate moral responsibility and Product Use or Misuse.

Q2. Discuss the role of Ethics Advisory Committee.

 

Business Ethics

CASE STUDY

Sick of angry campaign ads invading your living room? Dismayed by the vulgarity and poisonous political messages of the primary season? Don’t change the channel quite yet. As USA head into the general election in 2016, there are things to learn from political communications, and it is our duty as voters to cut through the rhetoric in order to vet these applicants for the most important job in the country. The American process for electing public officials is born out of the ethical ideal of creating an informed electorate. It is the campaign’s task to introduce the candidate and inform the voters about the candidate’s background, his or her positions on the issues, and how the candidate is different from the opponent. Political communications serve to inform the electorate, as long as the content of the communication is true, fair, and relevant. It is our task as voters to analyze all political communications to make sure that they meet this standard. It should be of no surprise to anyone that campaign communications often distort the truth. For example, who can forget Donald Trump’s television ad showing hundreds of immigrants streaming across the border. The only problem was that the video was taken in Morocco. Bernie Sanders came under fire when an ad about endorsements quoted favourable comments about him from a newspaper that had actually endorsed Clinton. Truth is the first task of campaign communications, but something true can still be unfair. We need to be wary of statements or facts which, while true, are being used out of context. Clinton was recently criticized for taking Sanders’ voting record out of context when she claimed in Michigan that he had voted against the auto bailout. Sanders had in fact supported a stand-alone bill bailing out the auto industry, but voted against the larger bill that not only included support for the auto industry but the banking and insurance industries as well. Whenever a candidate is criticized for casting a vote, we need to make sure we know the whole story. Not only should political communications be truthful, and fair, but they should also be relevant to the issues in the race. We have all seen political attacks that talk about a candidate’s youthful indiscretions, private marital troubles, or about problematic behavior on the part of a candidate’s family member or associate. The question of whether these types of attacks are relevant to the issues in the campaign can only be decided by the individual voter. For example, was the fact that Melania Trump posed for a risqué “British GQ” photo shoot 15 years ago, before she was married to Donald Trump, really relevant to the issues facing our country today? Is Bill Clinton’s past infidelity relevant to Hillary Clinton’s ability to govern? We must question whether a spot is designed purely to appeal to our base emotions (such as disgust at a family member’s behavior) or whether the content of the ad is pertinent to a legitimate interest in the race.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Give an overview of the case.

Q2. In your opinion, what are the unethical issues being used in election campaign? Discuss in detail.

 

CASE STUDY 

Many public policy arguments focus on fairness. Is affirmative action fair? Are congressional districts drawn to be fair? Is our tax policy fair? Is our method for funding schools fair? Arguments about justice or fairness have a long tradition in Western civilization. In fact, no idea in Western civilization has been more consistently linked to ethics and morality than the idea of justice. From the Republic, written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, to A Theory of Justice, written by the late Harvard philosopher John Rawls, every major work on ethics has held that justice is part of the central core of morality. Justice means giving each person what he or she deserves or, in more traditional terms, giving each person his or her due. Justice and fairness are closely related terms that are often today used interchangeably. There have, however, also been more distinct understandings of the two terms. While justice usually has been used with reference to a standard of rightness, fairness often has been used with regard to an ability to judge without reference to one’s feelings or interests; fairness has also been used to refer to the ability to make judgments that are not overly general but that are concrete and specific to a particular case. In any case, a notion of desert is crucial to both justice and fairness. The Nortons and Ellisons of this world, for example, are asking for what they think they deserve when they are demanding that they be treated with justice and fairness. When people differ over what they believe should be given, or when decisions have to be made about how benefits and burdens should be distributed among a group of people, questions of justice or fairness inevitably arise. In fact, most ethicists today hold the view that there would be no point of talking about justice or fairness if it were not for the conflicts of interest that are created when goods and services are scarce and people differ over who should get what. When such conflicts arise in our society, we need principles of justice that we can all accept as reasonable and fair standards for determining what people deserve. But saying that justice is giving each person what he or she deserves does not take us very far. How do we determine what people deserve? What criteria and what principles should we use to determine what is due to this or that person? The most fundamental principle of justice—one that has been widely accepted since it was first defined by Aristotle more than two thousand years ago—is the principle that “equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally.” In its contemporary form, this principle is sometimes expressed as follows: “Individuals should be treated the same, unless they differ in ways that are relevant to the situation in which they are involved.” For example, if Jack and Jill both do the same work, and there are no relevant differences between them or the work they are doing, then in justice they should be paid the same wages. And if Jack is paid more than Jill simply because he is a man, or because he is white, then we have an injustice—a form of discrimination—because race and sex are not relevant to normal work situations. There are, however, many differences that we deem as justifiable criteria for treating people differently. For example, we think it is fair and just when a parent gives his own children more attention and care in his private affairs than he gives the children of others; we think it is fair when the person who is first in a line at a theater is given first choice of theater tickets; we think it is just when the government gives benefits to the needy that it does not provide to more affluent citizens; we think it is just when some who have done wrong are given punishments that are not meted out to others who have done nothing wrong; and we think it is fair when those who exert more efforts or who make a greater contribution to a project receive more benefits from the project than others. These criteria—need, desert, contribution, and effort—we acknowledge as justifying differential treatment, then, are numerous. On the other hand, there are also criteria that we believe are not justifiable grounds for giving people different treatment. In the world of work, for example, we generally hold that it is unjust to give individuals special treatment on the basis of age, sex, race, or their religious preferences. If the judge’s nephew receives a suspended sentence for armed robbery when another offender unrelated to the judge goes to jail for the same crime, or the brother of the Director of Public Works gets the million dollar contract to install sprinklers on the municipal golf course despite lower bids from other contractors, we say that it’s unfair. We also believe it isn’t fair when a person is punished for something over which he or she had no control, or isn’t compensated for a harm he or she suffered. And the people involved in the “brown lung hearings” felt that it wasn’t fair that some diseases were provided with disability compensation, while other similar diseases weren’t. There are different kinds of justice. Distributive justice refers to the extent to which society’s institutions ensure that benefits and burdens are distributed among society’s members in ways that are fair and just. When the institutions of a society distribute benefits or burdens in unjust ways, there is a strong presumption that those institutions should be changed. For example, the American institution of slavery in the pre-civil war South was condemned as unjust because it was a glaring case of treating people differently on the basis of race. A second important kind of justice is retributive or corrective justice. Retributive justice refers to the extent to which punishments are fair and just. In general, punishments are held to be just to the extent that they take into account relevant criteria such as the seriousness of the crime and the intent of the criminal, and discount irrelevant criteria such as race. It would be barbarously unjust, for example, to chop off a person’s hand for stealing a dime, or to impose the death penalty on a person who by accident and without negligence injured another party. Studies have frequently shown that when blacks murder whites, they are much more likely to receive death sentences than when whites murder whites or blacks murder blacks. These studies suggest that injustice still exists in the criminal justice system in the United States. Yet a third important kind of justice is compensatory justice. Compensatory justice refers to the extent to which people are fairly compensated for their injuries by those who have injured them; just compensation is proportional to the loss inflicted on a person. This is precisely the kind of justice that was at stake in the brown lung hearings. Those who testified at the hearings claimed that the owners of the cotton mills where workers had been injured should compensate the workers whose health had been ruined by conditions at the mills. The foundations of justice can be traced to the notions of social stability, interdependence, and equal dignity. As the ethicist John Rawls has pointed out, the stability of a society—or any group, for that matter—depends upon the extent to which the members of that society feel that they are being treated justly. When some of society’s members come to feel that they are subject to unequal treatment, the foundations have been laid for social unrest, disturbances, and strife. The members of a community, Rawls holds, depend on each other, and they will retain their social unity only to the extent that their institutions are just. Moreover, as the philosopher Immanuel Kant and others have pointed out, human beings are all equal in this respect: they all have the same dignity, and in virtue of this dignity they deserve to be treated as equals. Whenever individuals are treated unequally on the basis of characteristics that are arbitrary and irrelevant, their fundamental human dignity is violated. Justice, then, is a central part of ethics and should be given due consideration in our moral lives. In evaluating any moral decision, we must ask whether our actions treat all persons equally. If not, we must determine whether the difference in treatment is justified: are the criteria we are using relevant to the situation at hand? But justice is not the only principle to consider in making ethical decisions. Sometimes principles of justice may need to be overridden in favor of other kinds of moral claims such as rights or society’s welfare. Nevertheless, justice is an expression of our mutual recognition of each other’s basic dignity, and an acknowledgement that if we are to live together in an interdependent community we must treat each other as equals. The views expressed do not necessarily represent the position of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. We welcome your comments, suggestions, or alternative points of view.

Answer the following question.

Q1. Discuss, “Justice, then, is a central part of ethics.”

Q2. Give an overview of the case.

 

CASE STUDY

Annapolis, Sept. 9: Nudists not only get more complete sun tans but seem to have lower blood pressure than people who wear clothes, according to the Central Maryland Chapter of the American Heart Association. Mr. Morris Lieberman, a spokesman for the Association, said tests performed on members of the Pine Tree Associates Nudist Camp in Crowns Ville, Maryland, over the past two years showed that Nudists had fewer cases of high blood pressure than the national average. He said that while the average nationally is 17 percent, the 1977 sampling found seven percent of the 163 Nudists tested had high blood pressure. In 1976, he said, only two percent of 150 Nudists tested had high blood pressure. One member of the Association suggested that “the only reason we’ve come up with is because the members are less inhabited. They have a tendency to lower blood pressure because of a lack of inner pressures and a feeling of total freedom.”

Answer the following question.

Q1. Do you agree with the above case? What are your viewpoints for the same on the ethical issues?

Q2. Help to find out the facts of the above case and comment on the unethical issues

 

CASE STUDY

Most people want to be ethical — and consider themselves to be. But incidents ranging from stolen library books to rogue trading illustrate that many people do not act as ethically as they want to, or as they think they do. “With all the evidence to support rational, good choices in the workplace or the marketplace, why don’t we all behave that way?” said Ann Skeet, director of leadership ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Skeet gave an introduction to a May 11 forum called, “The Behavioral Movement: What Business Professionals Should Know About Human Nature,” sponsored by the Business Ethics Partnership of the Markkula Center. Two speakers addressed what we know about why people behave unethically – and how the conditions that contribute to this behavior may be particularly acute in high-pressure environments like Silicon Valley. “The culture of Silicon Valley is different than in most other places,” said Hersh Shefrin, the Mario L. Belotti Professor of Finance at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business and a pioneer in the field of behavioral finance. “This is a risk-taking culture and a culture where goals are set very high.” This can make Silicon Valley workers especially vulnerable to the pressures that can lead to unethical decisions. For example, the increasing use of global teams, which can require phone calls early in the morning and late at night as well as regular hours in the office, may contribute to fatigue – a risk factor for poor decision-making. Still, Shefrin said, “we’re not as unique as we think we are – just more so.” Workers in Silicon Valley are subject to the same psychological issues as workers anywhere else. For example, all workers have blind spots, said Ann E. Tenbrunsel, professor in the College of Business Administration at the University of Notre Dame and the Rex and Alice A. Martin Research Director of the Institute for Ethical Business Worldwide. She addressed the psychology of ethical decision making, or “why people behave unethically despite the best intentions.” There have been significant efforts to improve ethics: at the regulatory level; at the organizational level, with millions spent on training; and at the educational level, with ethics being infused into the curriculum at many universities, Tenbrunsel said. Still, the headlines announcing bad behavior keep coming. “We haven’t taken the psychology of the decision maker into account,” Tenbrunsel said. She listed four ethical blind spots that contribute to poor decision making — ethical illusions, ethical fading, dangerous reward systems and motivated blindness — and elaborated on the first two. Ethical illusions are based on “illusions of our own ethicality,” Tenbrunsel said. She cited studies showing that library books on ethics – presumably checked out by people who think about ethics – are stolen more often than non-ethics books. And when people are asked to rate how honest they are, a majority of people rate themselves above average, which is statistically not possible. “We really seem to engage in hyperinflation about things related to morality and ethicality,” Tenbrunsel said. “If everyone thinks their companies are ethical, we don’t do a good job of really trying to find the problems.” It helps to think of three stages of the decision-making process, Tenbrunsel said: prediction, action and recollection. Before making a decision, people generally predict that they will act in accordance with their values. When it comes to taking action, that is not always what happens. But after the fact, “we remember that we did better than we did,” Tenbrunsel said. Why don’t people behave as they predict they will? One reason, said Tenbrunsel, is that prediction involves high-level ideals, whereas the action phase is more about the details and what is feasible at that particular moment. Forces such as hunger, fatigue and fear come into play, for example, and may overwhelm idealistic plans. “The body and mind’s goal is to mitigate it,” Tenbrunsel said. Ethical fading, the second blind spot Tenbrunsel discussed, happens when a person making a decision doesn’t view the decision as one that involves ethics. People use financial criteria to make financial decisions and legal criteria to make legal decisions, for example. So if a decision can be categorized as something other than an ethical one, it makes it easy to not consider ethics. Language plays a role in this area, as well: For example, a decision about “runoff” may be viewed differently than one about “pollution.” Shefrin continued the conversation by examining rogue trading, an example of how “finance and psychology and ethics all interconnect.” Because trading involves taking risks, it is useful to understand the psychology behind risk-taking. For example, most people will choose a sure gain over a smaller chance to win a larger amount. But they will choose the risk of a large loss over a sure loss. “Three of the most important emotions associated with what happens when you face a risk are fear, hope and aspiration,” Shefrin said. “People who are excessively fearful tend not to take risks that are worth taking in an actuarial sense, and people who are excessively hopeful tend to shoot for the stars when it’s not appropriate. In a situation like the rogue trading cases, traders find themselves in a situation where the pressures to succeed are so great that they take imprudent risks.” In addition to the psychology of the individuals involved, the strength of corporate processes and the way corporate culture encourages or discourages risk-taking play a role. “Strong corporate cultures that include an ethical dimension can help deal with the vulnerabilities,” Shefrin said. “The tone always starts at the top.”

Answer the following question.

Q1. Why imprudent risks are to be taken for great success. Explain

Q2. Debate the three stages of the decision-making process.

 

Business Ethics

Q1. Discuss polycentric approach to globalization.

Q2. Discuss philosophy and religion.

Q3. Write a short note on environment.

Q4. Explain National consumer disputes redressal commission.

Q5. Explain need for a check on quackery.

Q6. What is code of conduct for citizens.

Q7. Give importance of media in guiding citizens.

Q8. Give song of eighteen values.

 

Business Ethics

Q1. Explain need for a check on quackery.

Q2. Give characteristic of quality leadership.

Q3. Discuss consumerism

Q4. Give 7 points of New World order by M. K. Gandhi.

Q5. What is cultural ethos?

Q6. Discuss unethical practices vis-à-vis cheating.

Q7. Write a note on national consumer disputes redressal commission

Q8. Discuss polycentric approach to globalization.

 

Business Ethics

Q1. Give benefits of ISO 9000 quality systems.

Q2. How promotion of ethical values occur.

Q3. What is the relation of ethics in business?

Q4. Give importance and use of ISO 9000 standard.

Q5. Write a note on value education.

Q6. What is cultural ethos?

Q7. Give benefits of consumer education.

Q8. Write a short note on environment.

 

Business Ethics

Q1. Give importance of media in guiding citizens.

Q2. What are the fundamental duties of every citizen of India.

Q3. Give song of eighteen values.

Q4. Write a note on Consumer Safety.

Q5. Give benefits of consumer education.

Q6. Give 7 points of New World order by M. K. Gandhi.

Q7. What is cultural ethos?

Q8. What are the work related issues in ILO?

 

Business Ethics

Q1. Give measures to control pollution.

Q2. Give characteristic of quality leadership.

Q3. Write a note on Consumer Safety.

Q4. Discuss unethical practices vis-à-vis cheating.

Q5. What are some ethical problems in business.

Q6. Discuss managers role in business ethics.

Q7. Give SWOT analysis in Indian scenario.

Q8. Write a note on human culture and civilization.

 

Business Ethics

Q1. Give measures to control pollution

Q2. Write note on electrification of villages.

Q3. What is the problem of International Liquidity? In what manner this problem has been solved by IMF?

Q4. Give enlightening words of the Dalai Lama.

Q5. Give benefits of consumer education.

Q6. What is cultural ethos?

Q7. Discuss polycentric approach to globalization.

Q8. Explain the challenges of globalization of Indian industries.

 

Business Ethics

Q1. Give pts of Narasimhan Committee Report (1991)?

Q2. What is the relation of ethics in business?

Q3. Give need for consumer education.

Q4. Write a note on consumerism.

Q5. How promotion of ethical values occur.

Q6. What are some of the key strategies that a company can adopt to manage International Human Resource ?

Q7. List out the characteristics of direct distribution channel.

Q8. Explain exports of goods services in foreign exchange management act-1999.

 

Business Ethics

Q1. Give song of eighteen values.

Q2. What is code of conduct for citizens. 

Q3. Explain need for a check on quackery. 

Q4. Explain National consumer disputes redressal commission. 

Q5. Discuss consumerism

Q6. Write a note on Consumer Safety. 

Q7. What are some ethical problems in business. 

Q8. Discuss managers role in business ethics.

 

Business Ethics

Q1. What are attributes of profession.

Q2. Explain need for a check on quackery.

Q3. Write a short note on environment.

Q4. Give benefits of consumer education.

Q5. Give a note on Human culture.

Q6. Discuss unethical practices vis-à-vis cheating.

Q7. Write a note on national consumer duputesredressal commission

Q8. Write a note on consumerism.

 

Business Ethics

Q1. What are the fundamental duties of every citizen of India.

Q2. Give song of eighteen values.

Q3. Give 7 points of New World order by M. K. Gandhi.

Q4. Discuss unethical practices vis-à-vis cheating.

Q5. What are some ethical problems in business.

Q6. Discuss social justice according to gandhiji.

Q7. Explain main activities of ITPO.

Q8. Discuss polycentric approach to globalization.



Business Ethics

Q1. What is code of conduct for citizens.

Q2. Give characteristic of quality leadership.

Q3. Discuss consumerism

Q4. Write a note on Consumer Safety.

Q5. Discuss philosophy and religion.

Q6. Write a note on national consumer disputes redressal commission

Q7. Discuss social justice according to gandhiji.

Q8. What are the work related issues in ILO?

 

Business Ethics

Q1. What is code of conduct for citizens.

Q2. What is cultural ethos?

Q3. Discuss philosophy and religion.

Q4. Write a note on value education.

Q5. How morality is useful in business?

Q6. Write a note on consumerism.

Q7. What is imperative need?

Q8. Give benefits of ISO 9000 quality systems.

 

Business Ethics

Q1. What is code of conduct for citizens.

Q2. Give importance of media in guiding citizens.

Q3. What are attributes of profession.

Q4. Give characteristic of quality leadership.

Q5. Write a note on Consumer Safety.

Q6. Give 7 points of New World order by M. K. Gandhi.

Q7. Discuss unethical practices vis-à-vis cheating.

Q8. What are some ethical problems in business.

 

BUSINESS ETHICS

Q1. What is Ethical Analysis and discuss its Application: in Corporate Decision Making ?

Q2. Define Corporate Ethical Leadership and discuss its nature and features?

Q3. What is Corporate Social Responsibility? Explain its characteristics?

Q4. Enumerate and explain the Ethical Implications of Technology?

Q5. Write short notes (any two)
a) Ethical Analysis and its Application in Personal Decision Making.
b) Corporate Culture
c) Reputation Management.

Q6) Explain the following concept (any two)

  1. Social Reporting.
  2. Ethics in Finance Accountancy.
  3. Values in the Employment Relationship.


Q7) Define Ethics. Discuss the relation of Ethics and Human Resources Management?

Q8) What is the role of Ethics in Marketing?

 

Business Ethics

Q1. What is imperative need?

Q2. Write a note on human culture and civilization. 

Q3. Write a note on value education.

Q4. Discuss unethical practices visàvis cheating. 

Q5. Give benefits of consumer education.

Q6. Discuss consumerism

Q7. What is code of conduct for citizens.

Q8. Give enlightening words of the Dalai Lama.

 

BUSINESS ETHICS

  1. Write short note on value education & consumerism

  2. Give SWOT analysis in Indian scenario.

  3. Explain need for a check on quackery.

  4. Give measures to control pollution

  5. Discuss unethical practices vis-à-vis cheating.

  6. Give benefits of ISO 9000 quality systems & Give importance and use of ISO 9000 standard.

  7. Discuss seven points of mahatma Gandhi &Discuss social justice according to gandhiji.

  8. Give characteristic of quality leadership.

 

 

Intercultural Management and Ethics

Q1. What are the key steps to be followed for bringing in a planned change? Analyse the significance of each step with the help of an example.

Q2. What are the four major areas in which an organisation attempts to bring in change? Explain.

Q3. What are the key behavioural strategies that can be used to manage stress? Explain by taking personal examples.

Q4. What kind of problem situations Delphi Technique can be effectively utilized for decision –making? Take an example of a situation for explaining your answer.

Q5. What are the key abilities that an effective leader requires to manage situations in fast changing environment other than changing leadership style to effectively manage situations? Explain.

Q6. Differentiate between sincerity and seriousness .what is more important sincerity or seriousness? Explain by giving a proper rationale and reason.

Q7. What are the three key constituents of corporate governance as per Kumar Mangalam Birla Committee report on corporate governance?

Q8. Differentiate between market and non-market stakeholders. Explain by considering a concrete example the increasing relevance and importance of non-market stakeholders.