Explain why the affordable housing was necessary in the Bay Area
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Business Ethics
Case Studies
CASE STUDY (20 Marks)
An experienced and knowledgeable Indian
tourist guide suggested to a foreign tourist whom he was guiding that it would
better to give up the program of going around the places in the city and
instead visit a plush five star hotel whose nightclub featured a good cabaret.
The guide, further, said that he would explain his life story which could give
a clear picture of poverty in India.
Answer
the following question.
Q1.
Explain the unethical issues in this case.
Q2.
Give an overview of the case
CASE STUDY (20 Marks)
Jill has always had trouble focusing.
In middle school and high school, she has struggled to maintain her attention
on class, homework, and other academic responsibilities. If not for her own
determination and the encouragement of her parents, she probably would have
never gone to college as she does now. However, with midterms just around the
corner, her inattentive tendencies are flaring worse than ever. And with poor
grades after her first semester, she needs to do well on these tests to keep
her GPA above her scholarship’s cutoff. Fortunately, a friend of hers, one
familiar with Jill’s problems, has a prescription for Adder all and offers some
to Jill so she can concentrate better during finals. Jill only plans to take
the pills this one time considering summer is so near. She doesn’t think she’s
getting an advantage because her peers can already focus better than she can.
She really needs higher grades this semester to keep her scholarship.
Answer
the following question.
Q1.
Is it right using stimulants without a prescription? Comment.
Q2.
Give your views on the case.
CASE STUDY (20 Marks)
What's on the minds of the people
serving on boards or hoping to be? What can be learned about corporate
governance trends by knowing the answer? What do the issues business executives
are wrestling with add to the picture? Santa Clara University's Markkula Center
for Applied Ethics provides quarterly programming for Silicon Valley business
executives through its Business Ethics Partnership. Stanford University's Rock
Center for Corporate Governance provides annual programming for board directors
and others aiming to explore corporate governance hot topics. The Silicon
Valley Director's Exchange, affiliated with the Rock Center, provides monthly
programming on similar topics. I serve on the board of SVDx, staff the Markkula
Center's Business Ethics Program and attended the recent Rock Center Director's
College at Stanford. Listening is perhaps an underrated activity, but
opportunities to do so at these programs in the first six months of 2015 reveal
these trends worth watching for the remainder of the year and into 2016. They
also helped to illustrate the shifts in corporate governance trends over the
past decade. The pendulum is swinging back from concern solely with
shareholders to a broader set of stakeholders, from the vantage point of the
corporate boardroom, based on comments across a variety of topical discussions
and panels. Board directors and governance scholars readily accept a board's
role in protecting the interest of shareholders but can also now draw links to
shareholder interests from the interests of other constituents, such as
employees or the environment, when considering the impact of climate change.
The introduction of KKR's Green Portfolio, in partnership with the
Environmental Defense Fund in 2007, is one example of direct ways environmental
impact is being accounted for in business, but it is not the only way. Board
directors are fully engaged on the impact to a company's Long term value not
only of measures taken to ensure the company's sustainability, but the planet's
as well. Thoughtful exchanges in discussions about public relations, mergers
and acquisitions, and climate risk and opportunity as a disruptor suggest that
directors accept that corporations need to account for broader interests
because these interests do have an impact on shareholder value. Additionally,
demographic trends, like the increase of millennial in the workforce, introduce
a need to consider what those workers are seeking in their relationship with
employers. Diversity of perspective has long been supported in research and
practice as a goal boards should pursue when assembling participants.
Corporations are experiencing greater vulnerability to activist shareholders if
an investor's point of view is not represented on the board in the current
environment. The rise of LBOs and the reality that many activists are larger
corporations than the ones they target highlight a balancing act being played
out in boardrooms: acknowledge more stakeholders as their interests affect
share price over time but be sure current shareholders feel first among equals.
At a minimum, add active investors to the matrix of skills to consider when
seating an effective corporate board.
Answer
the following question.
Q1.
Give an overview of the case.
Q2.
“Active investors are required to the matrix of skills to consider when seating
an effective corporate board.” Discuss.
CASE STUDY (20 Marks)
In an address to Bay Area government
officials during the Center’s quarterly Public Sector Roundtable, Santa Clara
County Supervisor Joe Simitian spoke about affordable housing in the Bay Area,
using the ongoing housing dispute at Palo Alto’s Buena Vista Mobile Home Park
as a case study. Although invisible to many, Buena Vista has been a fixture of
Palo Alto since the 1920s. But depending on how the litigation plays out, the
mobile home park’s 400 residents (consisting of approximately 117 families
and 100 children) face the very real
possibility of having to leave their homes, their town, and maybe even the
entire Bay Area. When Simitian, the son of a teacher, moved to Palo Alto in
1967, he went to school with a group of kids from varying socioeconomic
backgrounds. He shared classes with the son of an air conditioning mechanic,
the daughter of a high school custodian, and the daughter of the CEO of Hewlett
Packard. Simitian recalled that in 1967, nobody thought it unusual that kids of
modest means went to the same school as the daughter of HP’s CEO. These kids
would eventually grow up to become mayors and middle schoolteachers; there was
no limit to what they could aspire toward. Unfortunately, Simitian said, the
uncertain fate of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park vividly demonstrates that’s
not the case in today’s Silicon Valley. A few years back, Buena Vista’s owners
decided they wanted to sell the mobile home property. Given the high demand for
land in the Bay Area, it was reasonable to assume that a developer would buy
the park and immediately replace it with more lucrative housing. The average
Buena Vista household currently makes $35,000 per year. Rent at Buena Vista is
approximately $750 per month. If the residents are forced to leave as part of
the sale, but wish to remain in Palo Alto, they’ll be faced with the prospect
of paying three to four times that much. And the neighboring cities aren’t much
costfriendlier. Despite the mobile home park’s invisibility, the people who
live at Buena Vista do a
lot of the work that Palo Alto
residents have come to rely on. One female resident makes sandwiches in the
deli at Molly Stone. Another works at the Four Seasons hotel in East Palo Alto.
A third resident was the Rotary Club president of East Palo Alto. Simitian
noted that it’s harder to “otherize” people once you know who they are and what
their place in the community is. The dispute over the closure of Buena Vista is
ultimately a city issue, but Simitian felt early on that something had to be
done for the 117 families. Months and months of work have resulted in public
backing from local newspapers, school board members, mayors, council members,
and an astoundingly successful rally in which 500 people from all parts of the
economic spectrum gathered to support their fellow community members. The city
of Palo Alto and the county have now set aside millions of dollars to help
settle the dispute with the property owners and keep the residents of Buena
Vista in their homes. Despite these impressive efforts, the opposing parties
are still deadlocked in litigation. With many questions unanswered for the
residents of Buena Vista, the question posed by Simitian to the Public Sector
Roundtable was, “Do we have an ethical obligation to make the South Bay a place
of opportunity for all?” In Palo Alto in particular, there’s a 3to1 jobs to
housing imbalance. When new housing does pop up, it’s $4,000amonth housing for
people who work at high tech companies. Simitian explained that this Bay Area
housing problem has developed into a major traffic problem, as people who work
in the Bay Area can no longer afford to live in the Bay Area. Monday through
Friday thousands of people shuffle in and out of the Bay Area from remote
places like Tracy and Gilroy. These people aren’t just sandwich makers and
hotel concierges. They’re law enforcement officers, firefighters, and nurses.
Additionally, local small businesses are having great difficulty attracting
employees. It’s a dynamic that Simitian believes does not create the kind of community
we’re looking for. One member of the Public Sector Roundtable suggested that
the case of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park is an argument for the need for
common good. In Simitian’s 1967 Palo Alto, everybody in the community was given
a shot. Not a guarantee, but a shot. Now as the community separates into those
who can afford to live within the city limits and those who cannot, that
opportunity, the participant said, may very well get taken away. Some members
of the community will mattero ffactly state that not everyone gets to live in
Palo Alto, or Mountain View or Los Altos. The economics simply don’t justify
it, they reason. And while Simitian acknowledges that this may be true, he
maintains that if we want to have the kind of community where we can go to the
deli and say “Hi Sally,” we need to do the best we can for as many as we can.
So exactly who is responsible for determining the fate of our community
experience? The state? The city? The market? Simitian explained that it’s often
human nature to pass the buck and task someone else with solving the
collective’s problem. But when a man in a crowd drops to the ground from an
apparent heart attack, isn’t it everyone’s responsibility to do whatever they
can to help? Housing is usually a regional issue, but it’s typically handled
city by city. Simitian pointed out that one challenge is that different cities
have different visions for what their city is all about. For instance, the
community members of a small, sleepy town might shy away from an initiative to
bring affordable housing within its borders because of the stigma that
“affordable housing” implies. A lot has been made over the last few years about
the 117 families whose community member status hangs in the balance. The
question has been raised: Why these 117 families? Simitian believes that one
problem with talks about affordable housing is that the people who need the
housing most are never in the room when the conversation is happening. The
abstract affordable housing dilemma does not often have a human dimension, but
with these 117 families, he pointed out, the human dimension is undeniable. You
can go to the mobile home park and actually see these people. It’s a real,
immediate concern.
Answer
the following question.
Q1.
Explain why the affordable housing was necessary in the Bay Area.
Q2.
Comment on the question posed by Mr. Simitian in the roundtable “Do we have an
ethical obligation to make the South Bay a place of opportunity for all?”
Assignment Solutions, Case study Answer sheets
Project Report and Thesis contact
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ARAVIND – 09901366442 – 09902787224
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