Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Jasson Alcantara
Silvio Gutierrez
Assignment - Chapter 4
Even though Trevors conduct was legal, was it unethical for him to sell goods that had
Most of the time people do not pay close attention to what being ethical means, and being
unethical is considered, from my point of view, a really wrong action. According to the book,
Legal and ethical environment of business, ethics is actually the study of what constitutes right of
wrong. Business people have to take ethical decision to have good relations impact and to take
less risk for consumers and his or her business workers. Jason Trevor was facing a dilemma
between earning profits and delivering quality products. Selling products that tested positive in
salmonella is unethical because they are potentially harmful to people. The Food and Drugs
Administration agency does not require the company to submit the test results. Therefore, the
company can manipulate the tests result to prove that their products meet hygienic and safety
requirement, which is acting at the moral minimum. Then, if we analyze there are many actions
and ramifications to this case. The first is stopping the production of the poisoned products unitl
eradicating the bacteria. The consequence is losing money from selling the products and
investing time on finding a solution to the salmonella issue. Another action is to take all the
poisoned products out of the market and stop selling the product definitely, which results in
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losing money and earning a bad reputation. A third choice is to keep selling the product until
many people die or get harmed, and they sue the company. This choice might result in a public
scandal harming the image of the company. Finally, selling the product infected by salmonella
was unethical due to business people have to care about their consumers and by his or her own
benefits and safety. The action itself is not ethical due to the customers do not know about the
higher possibility of getting ill by salmonella. Using common sense by taking ethical decisions is
a good way to avoid higher risk in business and to success at the same time.
The UK government set its tax rate between 20 and 24 percent; however, Zoidle actions are not
illegal since the government has not sanctioned them. The CEO of Zoidle is actually using an
ethical behavior since he is complying with the law and his actions do not harm the society. At
first, he owns a duty to the shareholders of the company, which is to maximize their profits. If he
pays the actual tax rate, this will result in less income to the shareholders. Producing less income
might induce the executive board to fire him. Furthermore, if the government forces the company
to pay a high tax rate, the owners of the company might decide to close the company. This will
generate unemployment and losses to country. On the other hand, if he keeps paying the
established tax rate, he will satisfy the executive board expectations and thus accomplish his
duty. In addition, the money payed to the government will still be used for the social and
administrative purposes. Finally, it is ethical to avoid paying taxes since they are a fulfill the law
How do a managers attitudes and actions affect the workplace? [Krasner v. HSH
Nordbank AG, 680 F.Supp.2d 502 (S.D.N.Y. 2010)] (See page 88.)
ethical actions in order to increase good relationships among employees. The behavior of the
managers in a company is so important. They are the ones who teach their employees and
coworkers how to react in difficult situations by taking the best decisions as good as possible. In
addition, their practices are a code of ethics in which they have to treat every single person in the
company respectfully and in the same manner due to every single person has the same rights as
others. Indeed, whenever a manager performs an unethical action is telling all other employees
that behaving unethically is right. In this case, Kisers behavior is affecting the human capital of
the company. His actions discourage employees to give their best because the will not be
awarded for their performance. At the same time, Kisers actions encourage employees to behave
unethically. They will think that they have the right to commit wrongful actions such as gender
discrimination and sexual harassment. Therefore, managers and leaders actions have to be a
model where employees can follow in order to behave correctly while working and out of the
workplace. When management in a company is poor, it is easy to predict that the company will
have many difficulties while growing and employees will not develop great skills and will not
success as business persons. In other words, no matter how many ethical rules there are set in a
workplace, employees would feel free to break them if they see their leader is doing so. In
(a) One group should use the principles of ethical reasoning discussed in this chapter to
develop three arguments that Pfizers conduct was a violation of ethical standards.
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1. Principles of Rights: Under the duty based ethics, Pfizer action was a violation of ethical
standards because it did not take into account peoples rights. The principles of right are
based on the basic human rights or fundamental rights to life, freedom, and pursuit of
happiness. Pfizers actions killed eleven children leaving other with terrible conditions.
making ethical decision due to society is involved in those actions. It can be considered
an excellent strategy for business to success, but in this case this company did not react in
the correct and ethical manner. In our personal opinion, the company did not showed a
3. Costs Benefit Analysis: this action is actually under a utilitarian model of ethics in which
an action is morally correct or right when it talks about people wellbeing. In this case,
(b) A second group should take a pro-Pfizer position and argue that the company did not
violate any ethical standards (and counter the first group).
Under a cost benefit analysis, we must analyze the negative and positive effects of an action. In
this case, Pfizer was trying to determine if its drug has efficient to infectious diseases. Pfizer
thought that giving the antibiotic to ill children would produce the maximum societal utility in
the future. However, Pfizer did not cause ill on those children intentionally. It is true that the
company wanted to help and they basically did not have time to prove that the treatment was the
best option due to children needed at the moment. Also, I can say that they acted ethically
because they were expecting the treatment to do well on children, they never said we have the
cure for them, it was better to try than not trying, they just took the challenge in order to help.
Additionally, we have to consider that the terrible conditions those children got were caused by
(c) A third group should come up with proposals for what Pfizer might have done
differently to avert the consequences.
1. Pfizer should have warning labels about the side effects of its experimental drug to
2. Also, they should take more time on analyzing a product and hiring specialized people to
do those analyses. In addition, they should invest more in researching their experimental
drugs. However, Pfizer should take the necessary methods of preventions while testing
3. Pfizer wanted to help the Nigerian hospital, but to do that, they should took into account
that sending medical treatment before testing them in human would produce different
I pledge upon my honor that I have neither given nor received any authorized aid on this
assignment
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References
Cross, F. B., & Miller, R. L. (2015). The legal environment of business: text and cases.
Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.