Reference no: EM131121790 , Length: word count:2000

1. ETHICAL DILEMMA: Producing toys-child's play?

You are the product manager of a confectionery company that includes small plastic toys with its chocolate sweets. Having met a potential Thai manufacturer of these toys at a trade fair in Europe, you now visit the company in the north-eastern part of Thailand to finalize a two-year supply contract. Arriving there and talking to the sales manager, you are able to arrange a deal that supplies you with the toys at a third of the cost currently charged by your Portuguese supplier, but with equivalent quality and supply arrangements.

In order to check the reliability of the manufacturing process you ask the manager to show you around the place. You are surprised to find out that there is no real workshop on the premises, Rather, the production process is organized such that at 6am, about 30 men line up at the company's gate, load large boxes with toy components on their little carts or motor-scooters and take the material to their homes.

Your prospective supplier then takes you to one of these places where you see a large family, sitting in a garage-like barn assembling the toys. Not only are the mother and father doing the job, but also the couple's six children, aged five to 14, who are working busily-and from what you see, very cheerfully-together with the parents, while the grandmother is looking after the food in an adjacent room. In the evening, at around 8pm, the day's work is done, the assembled toys are stored back in the boxes and taken to the workshop of the company, where the men receive their payment_ for the finished goods. At the end of the week, the toys are shipped to the customers in Europe.

As you have never come across such a pattern of manufacturing, your Thai partner explains to you that this is a very common and well-established practice in this part of the country, and one that guarantees a good level of quality. Satisfied, you tell the Thai manager that you will conclude the paperwork once you get back home, and you leave the company offices happy in the knowledge of the cost savings you are going to make, and quietly confident that it will result in a healthy bonus for you at the end of the year.

On your way back, white buying some souvenirs for your five- and seven-year-old nieces at the airport, you suddenly start wondering if you would like to see them growing up the same way as the child workers that you have just employed to make your company's toys.

Questions-

1. Reading the case and putting yourself in the role of the product manager, what would your immediate gut reaction be?

2. Based on your spontaneous immediate decision, can you set out the reasons for your choice? Also, can you relate those reasons back to some underlying values or principles that are obviously important to you?

2. ETHICAL DILEMMA: Off your face on Facebook?

You are the human resource manager of AllCure Pharmaceuticals. It is a busy time and the guys in the product approval department have called you because they desperately need to hire a new team member to assist them with the clinical trials of what could become the next blockbuster drug for the company. You get started and within a week you have managed to get three well-qualified applicants for the job. The interviews went well and there are two really good applicants. Both are women, recent college graduates, and you find it hard to decide among them.

The clinical trials that the new hire will work on are very important. They require very reliable, meticulous work attitude, but also good social skills to manage the different relations between the clinics, the approving authorities, and various departments in the company. A colleague suggests you check the two finalists out on various social networking sites to see how suitable they seem. Later in the day, you login to Facebook, and yes, one of them is there! Surfing through her posts and photos you see a very sociable, obviously well-travelled individual.

The other candidate is a bit more difficult to locate. This is too bad, as she already has some work experience and on paper is the slightly better candidate Of the two. Her details are only available to friends, but browsing through her list of some 800 friends, you find that one of your current interns is actually on her ist. You call in your intern, who it turns out briefly met this second candidate on a course they took together at college years ago, and together you take a look at the Facebook page of the second candidate. Doing so, you make some interesting discoveries: not only do you find a number of photos of her taking her shirt off at parties, but there are plenty of pictures of her apparently engaged in heavy alcohol use and even two pictures where she is undoubtedly taking illegal drugs.

You thank your intern for her help and sit back in your chair wondering what to do. You are worried about hiring someone who is too much into partying, and possibly even illegal activity, especially for a job that requires sensitive and conscientious work. Plus, you can just imagine what the reaction of patients, coworkers or even more importantly, the officials at the regulating bodies might say if the pictures became public. 'Hey, have you heard about the AllCure girls you can imagine them saying, 'you really have to see these pictures ...'.

Questions-

1. What are the main ethical issues in this case?

2. What are the main ethical arguments for and against the use of social network sites for potential employers in this situation?

3. Think of how you use Facebook or similar sites. Does this case influence the way you might use these sites in the future?

4. How would you finally decide as the human resource manager in this situation?

Source - Based on Du, W 2007. Job candidates getting tripped up by Facebook. 14 August 2007: hittp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20202935/from/ET/.

3. ETHICAL DILEMMA: A fitting approach to shoe selling?

You are the manager of an independent high street shoe store, specializing in fashionable shoes for men and women. Your staff comprises a small team of eight salespeople who all take part in selling shoes, checking and maintaining stock, and processing sales and orders. You run a pretty successful operation, but there is intense competition from major shoe-store chains as well as one or two other independent stores in the city where you are located. To motivate your staff, a couple of years ago you introduced an incentive scheme that gives employees 5% commission on everything they sell. This has worked pretty well-the store has maintained profitability and the employees are all fairly well paid.

You have recently hired a new salesperson, Lola, who has made quite an impact on sales. She not only seems to be enjoying a great deal of success selling shoes, but she has also proved to be popular with everyone in the store, including the customers. Since she has arrived, though, Lola has also been giving you some cause for concern. Although no one has complained about her, you have noticed that, at times, some of her successful sales techniques do not always involve her being completely truthful.

For example, on one occasion last week you noticed that she was serving a customer who was plainly unsure whether to purchase a particular pair of shoes. Lola obviously thought the shoes suited the woman, but to create a little more urgency, she said that the model the woman was interested in was the last pair in stock and that she did not think the store would be able to get any more for another month. However, you knew for certain that there were at least five or six pairs in the stockroom, and that reordering when they were sold cut should only take a week. Still, the customer eventually decided to buy the shoes, and once she had made the decision she seemed delighted with them.

Then yesterday, Lola was serving a man who obviously wanted a particular pair of shoes that he had seen in the window. She asked him his size (which was 43) but when she got to the storeroom she discovered that there was only a 42 and a 44 in stock. She asked you if you knew whether there was a 43 anywhere but you had to tell her no-you had sold the last pair yourself only the day before. Undeterred, Lola picked up both the 42 and the 44 and took the shoes back out to the man. Giving him the 42 first, she said to him that the company did not sell 'odd' sizes and they only came in 42 and 44. The customer tried on the 42, but obviously found them too small. While he was doing this though, Lola took out the 44 and carefully placed an additional insole in the bottom of the shoe. 'Give this a go,' she said handing the shoes to the man, This should do the trick'. To his delight, they fitted fine and he said he would take them. At this point, Lola mentioned that because the manufacturer did not do 'odd' sizes, she had put insoles into the shoes, which would cost an additional €3. Still pleased with the shoes, the man said fine and paid for both the shoes and the insoles.

You were unsure what to do about the situation. Although the customers seemed pleased with their purchases, Lola was clearly lying to them. Would there be any long-term repercussions of such practices? And what would the rest of the tear think about it? Would they start copying Lola's successful sales techniques?

4. ETHICAL DILEMMA: Stuck in the middle?

You have recently been appointed to the position of civil engineer in a small town in a developing country. You are responsible for the maintenance of the town's infrastructure, such as public buildings and roads. You are one of the youngest members of the senior management team and report directly to the director of public works. AU of the members of the management team have been working for the organization for a very long time, and you feel like something of an outsider. The director of public works, the human resources director, and the CEO often have lunch together, and it is generally felt that most important organizational decisions are made over lunch.

Your position had been vacant for a long time prior to your appointment and the director of public works had assumed responsibility for a number of your current responsibilities. On your appointment, your manager asked you to check with him before implementing any major changes. He also retained the authority to approve major works.

After some time, you realized that despite having a full staff complement, a number of outside contractors were doing various jobs within the organization. When you queried this, the director simply put it down to 'rusty skills', 'a significant backlog', and 'quality of work'. However, you have been impressed with the quality of work that your staff have produced on odd maintenance jobs that you have assigned them. Recently, when you were complimenting one of your supervisors on the way he handled an emergency, he expressed his frustration at being given the 'boring, odd jobs' instead of the 'challenging' projects given to contractors.

You decided to utilize your own staff rather than contractors for the next pro ect because you felt that you would be able to supervise the work better and ensure the right quality. You planned it meticulously and wanted to enlist the support of your manager to ensure that all went well. You prepared all of th paperwork and took it to your manager for discussion. He looked disinterested and simply asked you to leave the paperwork with him because he was preparing for a meeting.

The following week, your manager informed you that he had gone through your paperwork, and asked one of the more experienced contractors to submit a proposal for the job. He told you that he had already discussed this issue with the CEO, because he felt that this was a critical job and the contractors would complete the work within a shorter time than the internal staff. You were very upset about this and asked your manager why he had not involved you in the decision-making process. You are increasingly uncomfortable that you are expected to supervise and authorize payments for contractors whose appointment seems questionable.

'This dilemma was prepared by Nelisiwe Dlamini and has been reproduced with the author's permission.

5. ETHICAL DILEMMA: When good results are bad results

Professor Ballistico is scratching his head. Looking at the results of last month's series of experiments has brought on a distinct feeling of unease. He has been sitting in his office for hours now trying to analyse the spreadsheets from every possible angle-but without success. He even had an argument with his research assistant, accusing her of having prepared the results incorrectly-but she had been right all along.

Not that Ballistico is unhappy about the project itself, It is actually quite a successful piece of research looking at the various side effects of food additives in frozen food. The two-year project has already produced some very good publications; he has even been invited several times to give interviews on television about the results. However, the latest round of results has got him wondering.

The reason for Ballistico's unease is that according to the results of the latest tests, two substances involved in the study, called "Longlife' and 'Rotnever', appear to significantly increase the risk of human allergies for long-time consumers of the addi¬tives. And however he interprets the results, his assistant really seems to have delivered solid work on the data analysis.

Normally such surprising results would be good news. Solid results of this kind would make for sensational presentations at the next conference of the World Food Scientist Federation. On top of that, 'Longlife' and 'Rotnever' are very common additives in the products of the large food multinational Foodcorp, which is the market leader in frozen food in his country. His results could really make big headlines.

There is one problem though: Professor Ballistico is director of the Foodcorp Centre for Food Science at BigCity University, Three years ago, Foodcorp donated €2.3 million to BigCity University in order to set up the research centre and to fund its activities. The company felt that as 'a good corporate citizen we should give something back to society by funding academic research for the benefit of future generations'. It also signalled that it saw this as a continuous engagement over time ... and Ballistico is only too aware that the decision about the next €2 million funding will be imminent three months from now.

Professor Ballistico has a major dilemma: if he publishes his results, Foodcorp might get into serious trouble. He also knows that this will be quite embarrassing at the next meeting with his sponsor, and it will most certainly influence the company's decision to further fund the centre. And he hardly dares to think of his next meeting with the president of the university, who is always so proud of BigCity having such excellent ties to companies and scoring highest in the country in terms of its ability to secure external funding. Should he therefore just tell Foodcorp privately about his results so that it can take appropriate action to deal with Rotnever and Longlife, or should he go public with his findings?

Questions-

1. What are the main ethical issues for Professor Ballistico here?

2. What options are open to him? How would you assess these options?

Ethics and Business

A reflective journal including a summary on your responses to the five (5) topics identified. It MUST also contain your answer to the following question;

Is a universal Code of Ethics for global businesses needed and is it possible?

This question should be answered with reference to the five (5) topics. All reflections should be supported by reference to the text and other relevant academically acceptable sources.