You are contacted by an executive recruiter and told about another job with an excellent company that has an immediate need. You occupy a key position in your present company, and you are presently involved with a major long-term project (it will take at least a month to complete) that will be seriously damaged and may have to be abandoned …
Business Case #3: Customer vs. Company
You learn that your company has overcharged a regular customer. You bring the matter to the attention of your supervisor, and you are nicely told to mind your own business. It is apparent that nothing will be done about the past overcharges and that there will be additional overcharges in the future. What do you do?
Business Case #7: Friend With a Drug Problem
You become aware that the drug problem of a co-worker whom you like is becoming worse and beginning to affect his work. What do you do? Does it matter what kind of work the person does?
Business Case #2: Taking the Heat
You are the manager of a regional office. Your employees claim that it is too cold at their work stations. A comprehensive heating system would be prohibitively expensive (about $25,000). The president of the company is unsympathetic, so you make an unauthorized purchase of six space heaters to put around employees’ desks. To place them correctly, you use extension cords …
Business Case #6: Silver-Plating and Cyanide
The G.R. Bronson Company is a large publicly-owned conglomerate whose holdings are primarily in the retail sale of jewelry. Several years ago, it purchased for $10 million a plant that puts silver and gold plate on jewelry. The seller, Hedda Wilson, stayed on to manage the company until last year. Behind the plating facility there are three underground tanks. One …
Business Case #5: Everybody’s Doing It
You are a new employee. After a few weeks, you discover that many people in your department take company supplies, make personal calls on company phones and pad expense reports. Your supervisor is one of the persons involved and he claims that the company treats such minor acts as a kind of fringe benefit to make up for low salaries. …
Ethics and Intentions
During the Watergate probe, the question continually asked was, “What did President Nixon know and when did he know it?” Our judgment of his behavior depends on the answer to those questions. The more he knew and the earlier he knew it, the worse it was. The Iran-Contra investigation of the decision to sell arms to Iran and use the proceeds …
Business Case #11: Abrasive Personality in the Workplace
Jan is a clerk with a very abrasive personality. She is usually competent but at least once a month she says or does something that seriously offends co-workers or members of the public. Dan, her supervisor, has counseled her several times but concludes she is a negative influence and he wants to terminate her but this is her fourth year …
Business Case #4: Financial Crisis
You are the chief financial officer of a 25-year-old manufacturing company that employs 75 people. The company has been losing money for four years and its family owners have poured over $1 million dollars into it to save it. In addition, the company has a $750,000 line of credit. The bank has become increasingly nervous about the loan, especially since …
“Ought” Versus “Is” Ethics
Many debates about ethical issues become bogged down in a fundamental confusion caused by two very different ways in which the term ethics is used. In most cases, ethics refers to notions of moral obligation, ideas and beliefs about what people should do — the “ought.” Often, however, the term is used simply to describe what certain people or cultures …
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