Explain the unethical aspects in the above case
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Business Ethics
Case Studies
CASE STUDY (20 Marks)
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 theMayapuri 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. Policy of Prohibition (20 Marks)
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 these grounds ethically justifiable? Explain.
Q2.
In your opinion what are the benefits of prohibition.
CASE STUDY (20 Marks)
Monitoring of air and noise pollution
is necessary in the interests of public health. Every year the festival of
light (Diwali) is celebrated with great enthusiasm in India. Recently, the
Pollution Control Board has appealed to citizens and traders not to use or deal
in banned firecrackers such as Lava Bomb 1 to 5, Shera atom bomb, confetti, Bo force
Gun, Fire ball, Lal Mirchi Cony 2000 Buz, Beautiful Flowers, Shooting stars,
and Crackling King. These fire crackers were banned as they generate noise
levels between 125 and 145 decibels, thereby violating noise pollution limits.
The department of explosives is supposed to implement the standards in
accordance with the information received by it from the Pollution Control Board.
Further, according to the Environment Protection Agency EPA (1988), the noise
code states: “The manufacture, sale or use of fire crackers generating noise
level exceeding 125 decibels to 145 decibels at 4 meter distance from the point
of bursting is prohibited”. After observing that the prescribed noise levels
were not properly adhered to during the festival, the Pollution Control Board
sent reports to the Department of Explosives for information and action. Even
though the Pollution Control Board appealed to the citizens to refrain from
buying these banned crackers and asked traders not to sell such offending fire
crackers, the appeal fail on deaf ears, and noise pollution limits were flagrantly
violated.
Answer
the following question.
Q1.
Give an overview of the above case.
Q2.
Explain the ethical aspects in the above case
Q3.
Explain the unethical aspects in the above case
Q4.
What are your viewpoints in the above case w.r.t. ethical issues.
CASE STUDY (20 Marks)
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, acompany'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 twonotable examples.
"It's odd when you think about it, because this differs pretty
substantially from that first notion of moralresponsibility 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, non corporate 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 screening the 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 ofthe 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.
Discuss the Ethics of Product Usage.
Q2.
How the Moral responsibility can be interpreted. Explain.
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