Business Ethics
Chapter 4: 5 questions, 20 points each
1. What happened to Zappos (according to our book)? (See page 112) Would you do the same thing, or would you refund everyone their online purchase pricewhatever they charged to their accountand keep the item(s) they ordered to sell later? Explain from a combined business (profit), business reputation, and ethical perspective what you would do and why. (2 paragraphs)
2. What did Johnson & Johnson do that warranted a $2.2 billion settlement? (see page 128) Find one sentence in their credo that contradicts what they didand explain why it contradicts what they did. (1 paragraph)
3. On page 137 mention is made of a 2005 Supreme Court decision which lessened penalties for those found guilty of business/financial crimes. Without googling this decision or going to any outside sources, just based on the few words our text says about this, in your own words explain what the book is saying this decision did (how it lessened the penalties) by giving a hypothetical example you create. How would the penalty phase for your hypothetical crime be given before and after this critical Supreme Court decision about business crimes? (1-2 paragraphs)
4. On page 144, in the article Creating an Ethics Program, we read: A 2003 study found that corporate employees in the United States are witnessing record-low levels of wrongdoing, and these levels have continued to drop since 2007. It might be the case that these lower levels of witnessing corporate malfeasance in fact show there are lower levels of corporate malfeasance occurring. But one reason for the lower reported malfeasance is directly mentioned by our authors: Some of that decline is due, in part, to high retaliation rates that discourage reporting (p. 144). Here our authors are admitting that lower levels of reporting are NOT showing less corporate malfeasance. Questions: Give ONE OTHER plausible reason for why corporate employee reportings of malfeasance are declining annually, but in factin realitythere is just as much (or more) corporate malfeasance occurring. (You are giving one more reasonother than retaliation and other than there really is no malfeasance to reportthat explains why there have been fewer corporate employees reporting malfeasance annually even though malfeasance is in reality not declining.) Describe your reason in action with an example (but do not name real people at real companies). (1 paragraph)
5. Answer #7 on page 145 (Under Questions, Projects, and Exercises). To get full credit, your answer must be plausible from a business perspective and from an ethical perspective (e.g. you cannot say hire a private investigator to break into the branch boss house and look for stolen goods, to get full credit. That is unethical and not a wise business practice).
Book: Business Ethics: Decision Making for Personal Integrity and Social Responsibility, by Laura Hartman, Joseph DesJardins, and Chris MacDonald, 4th edition 2018
