Business Ethics (Final Exam)

United Nations Global Compact

A set of 10 principles that promote human rights, sustainability, and the eradication of corruption. Sets forth 10 ethical principles in the hope that countries will 130 countries have signed)(ex., no slave labor, respect rights of women, no child labor, etc.) Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and Principle 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses. Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining; Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour; Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labour; and Principle 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. Principle 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges; Principle 8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and Principle 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies. Principle 10: Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.

Social Conscious Audits

A social audit is a formal review of a company's endeavors, procedures, and code of conduct regarding social responsibility and the company's impact on society. A social audit is an assessment of how well the company is achieving its goals or benchmarks for social responsibility.

The Bribed Soul

Advertising now infects just about every organ of society, and wherever advertising gains a foothold it tends to slowly take over, like a vampire or a virus. When television broadcasting began about 50 years ago, the idea of network that would air nothing but commercials was never seriously considered, not even when single-sponsor shows were produced straight out of the sponsor's ad agency. But today, by the grace of cable, we have several such channels, including MTV and FYI, a proposed new channel that would run only ads. Similarly, product placement in the movies started small, with occasional Tab showing up in a star's hand, but now it's grown big enough to eat the whole thing. In its 1993 futuristic thriller Demolition Man, Warner Bros. not only scattered the usual corporate logos throughout the sets but also rewrote the script so that the only fast-food chain to survive the "franchise wars" of the 20th century was Taco Bell — which, in return, promoted the movie in all its outlets. From the cradle to the rocking chair, American life marches to the steady beat of commercialism. Even older, far statelier cultural institutions have had their original values hollowed out and replaced by ad values, leaving behind the merest fossil of their founders' purpose. Modernist masters enjoy art museum blockbusters only when they can be prominently underwritten by an oil company or telecommunications giant; new magazines are conceived, not on the basis of their editorial content but on their ability to identify potential advertiser and groom their copy to fit marketing needs. As for all those television-watching Americans, hit on by those 16,000 paid (and tax-deductible) messages a day, they're even more vulnerable than their institutions. Most admakers understand that in order to sell to you they have to know your desires and dreams better than you may know them yourself, and they've tried to reduce that understanding to a science. Market research, in which psychologists, polling organizations, trends analysts, focus group leaders, "mall-intercept" interviewers, and the whole panoply of mass communications try to figure out what will make you buy, has become a $2.5 billion annual business growing at a healthy clip of about 4.2 percent a year (after adjustment for inflation). Yet even this sophisticated program for the study of the individual consumer is only a starter kit for the technological advances that will sweep through the advertising-industrial complex in the 1990s. Today, the most we can do when another TV commercial comes on — and we are repeatedly told that this is our great freedom — is to switch channels. But soon technology will take even that tiny tantrum of resistance and make it "interactive," providing advertisers with information on the exact moment we became bored — vital data that can be crunched, analyzed, and processed into the next set of ads, the better to zap-proof them. Impressive as such research may be, the real master work of advertising is the way it uses the techniques of art to seduce the human soul. Virtually all of modern experience now has a sponsor, or at least a sponsored accessory, and there is no human emotion or concern — love, lust, war, childhood innocence, social rebellion, spiritual enlightenment, even disgust with advertising — that cannot be reworked into a sales pitch. The transcendent look in a bride's eyes the moment before she kisses her groom turns into a promo for Du Pont. The teeth gnashing humiliation of an office rival becomes an inducement to switch to AT&T. In short, we're living the sponsored life. From Huggies to Maalox, the necessities and little luxuries of an American's passage through this world are provided and promoted by one advertiser or another. The sponsored life is born when commercial culture sells our own experiences back to us. It grows as those experiences are then reconstituted inside us, mixing the most intimate processes of individual thought with commercial values, rhythms, and expectations. It has often been said by television's critics that TV doesn't deliver products to viewers but that viewers themselves are the real product, one that TV delivers to its advertisers. True, but the symbiotic relationship between advertising and audience goes deeper than that. The viewer who lives the sponsored life — and this is most of us to one degree or the other — is slowly re-created in the ad's image. Inside each "consumer," advertising's all-you-can-eat, all-the-time, all-dessert buffet produces a build-up of mass-produced stimuli, all hissing and sputtering to get out. Sometimes they burst out as sponsored speech, as when we talk in the cadences of sitcom one-liners, imitate Letterman, laugh uproariously at lines like "I've fallen and I can't get up," or mouth the words of familiar commercials, like the entranced high school student I meet in a communications class who moved his lips with the voiceover of a Toyota spot. Sometimes they slip out as sponsored dress, as when white suburban kids don the baggy pants and backward baseball caps they see on MTV rappers. Sometimes they simply come out as sponsor equations, as when we attribute "purity" and "honesty" to clear products like Crystal Pepsi or Ban's clear deodorant. To lead the sponsored life you don't really have to do anything. You don't need to have a corporate sponsor as the museums or the movies do. You don't even have to buy anything — though it helps, and you will. You just have to live in America and share with the nation, or at least with your mall-intercept cohorts, certain paid-for expectations and values, rhythms and reflexes. The chief expectation of the sponsored life is that there will and always should be regular blips of excitement and resolution, the frequency of which is determined by money. We begin to pulse to the beat, the one-two beat, that moves most ads: problem/solution, old/new, BrandX/Hero brand, desire/gratification. In order to dance to the rhythm, we adjust other expectations a little here, a little there: our notions of what's desirable behavior, our lust for novelty, even our vision of the perfect love affair or thrilling adventure adapt to the mass consensus coaxed out by marketing. Cultural forms that don't fit these patterns tend to fade away, and eventually everything in commercial culture comes to share the same insipid insistence on canned excitement and neat resolution. What's all the excitement about? Anything and nothing. You know you've entered the commercial zone when the excitement building in you is oddly incommensurate with the content dangled before you...through the sympathetic magic of materialism we learn how to respond to excitement: It's less important that we purchase any particular product than that we come to expect resolution in the form of something buyable. Commercials are the tinny jingles in our heads that remind us of all we've abandoned in exchange for our materially comfortable lives — real extended families, real human empathy, real rebel prowess.

America's disproportional use of the world's resources (p. 385)

Americans use some 60% of the world's resources for less than 5 percent of its population. And then we ask the Third World to cut back on its pollution and use of resources. Is that fair? But in any case, we must look at our own lifestyles and expectations -which by now have often grown into feelings of entitlement- and ask whether our own responsibilities as consumers are as much a part of the problem as the behavior of the giant corporations.

Allocation of Costs

An element of tort law. This was created to make producers of goods and services pay the cost of accidents. It forces providers to be careful. It also forces consumers to take accident costs into account, not consciously but by paying a safety-adjusted price for everything they buy or do. It compels the improvident to buy accident insurance, again not directly but through the safety tax. It has a moral dimension too: people should be required to care before the accident and to help each other afterward, for no reason than it is just, right, and proper to insist that they do.

SOFA

Are multilateral or bilateral agreements that establish the framework under which U.S. military personnel operate in a foreign country and how domestic laws of the foreign jurisdiction apply toward U.S. personnel in that country. Proposed legislation.

cultural relativism

Cultural relativism is the principle of regarding the beliefs, values, and practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that culture itself. It states that there are no universal beliefs, and each culture must be understood in its own terms, because cultures cannot be translated into terms which are accessible everywhere. The principle is sometimes practiced to avoid cultural bias in research, as well as to avoid judging another culture by the standards of one's own culture. For this reason, cultural relativism has been considered an attempt to avoid ethnocentrism. Cultural Relativism refers to the ability to understand a culture on their own terms, and consequently not making judgments based on the standards of one's own culture.

Ethical issues with advertising of energy drinks and herbal supplements (Case 7.4, p. 273)

For many people, no day can start without a healthy dose of caffeine. Those looking for an edge by chugging an energy drink may be disappointed to find out there is no proof these drinks work as advertised. The best example is Red Bull, a company that promises their drink "gives you wings." Promises like that have turned energy drinks in the fastest growing market in the beverage industry. In 2012, energy drink sales rose to $10 billion. Studies are now beginning to show that all the hoopla may be overblown. Dr. Roland Griffiths, a researcher at John Hopkins University who has spent years studying energy drinks, believes these companies choose to market this way to sell the product: "These are caffeine delivery systems. They don't want to say this is equivalent to a NoDoz because that is not a very sexy sales message." "If you had a cup of coffee you are going to affect metabolism in the same way." Markey believes that, by marketing their products as providing benefits beyond caffeine like a mental edge, energy drink companies are able to charge premium prices for their products. The European Food and Safety Authority has published studies that conclude the effects that energy drinks provide equal to those of the caffeine coffee provides. The Food and Drug Administration is even placing energy drink companies under the microscope after a series of caffeine-related deaths. At the same time, Red Bull claims on its own website that more than 2,500 reports have been published about taurine, its main stimulant, and its physiological effects. Here is a Red Bull commercial to emphasize how they market their energy drink: What do you think, is it fair for a company to market a product based on un-substantiated claims?

Protect IP Act

The PROTECT IP Act is a simple and inexpensive way to fight back against the foreign profiteers who operate rogue websites. The legislation permits courts to compel advertising companies, credit card companies, search engines, and domain name system server operators to cease cooperating with for-profit websites dedicated to providing or selling illegal content. The financial success of illegal offshore websites is dependent on them selling stolen content or counterfeit goods. The Act gives law enforcement the tools it needs to go after the "worst-of-the-worst" of these illegal websites by making them harder to access and by restricting their funding. By disrupting the business model of rogue websites, the Act will encourage the free expression of copyright creators and protect injured American businesses and the hundreds of thousands of jobs they provide. At the same time, it will protect consumers from the predatory business practices of illegal offshore websites, including identify theft and the sale of dangerous or defective counterfeit goods.

Negligence Law

A part of tort law dealing with unintentional conduct that falls below a standard established by law for the protection of others against unreasonable risk of harm. Probably one of the most common types of personal injury lawsuits involves a claim of negligence. Negligence describes a situation in which a person acts in a careless (or "negligent") manner, which results in someone else getting hurt or property being damaged. Negligence can often be a difficult area of law to define because it involves a legal analysis of the elements of negligence as they relate to the facts of a particular case.

The argument regarding sweatshops in other countries, and a counter-argument. (p. 364-367)

Argument against sweatshops: Most shoppers like bargains. Do bargains come at the expense of workers in sweatshops around the world? The authors argue that many large multinational corporations are running the moral equivalents of sweatshops and are not properly respecting the rights of persons. They list a set of minimum standards of safety and decency that they claim all corporations should meet. Finally, they defend their call for improved working conditions by replying to objections that meeting improved conditions will cause greater harm than good, even to the workers themselves. They consider many specific corporations and name names and point the finger at various forms of disrespect for persons, along the way. They believe that at minimum, respect for employees entails that MNE's and their suppliers have a moral obligation to ensure that employees do not live under conditions of overall poverty by providing adequate wages for a 48 hour work week to satisfy both basic food needs and basic non-food needs. Doing so helps to ensure the physical well-being and independence of employees, contributes to the development of their rational capacities, and provides them with opportunities for moral development. Argument for sweatshops: Most sweatshop workers choose to accept the conditions of their employment, even if their choice is made from among a severely constrained set of options. The fact that they choose the conditions of their employment from within a constrained set of options is strong evidence that they view it as their most-preferred option. The fact that they view it as their most preferred option is strong evidence that we will harm them by taking that option away. It is also plausible that sweatshop workers' choice to accept the conditions of their employment is sufficiently autonomous that taking the option of sweatshop labor away from them would be a violation of their autonomy. All else being equal, it is wrong to harm people or to violate their autonomy. Therefore, all else being equal, it is wrong to take away the option of sweatshop labor from workers who would otherwise choose to engage in it.

Too many lawyers/lawsuits

Bates vs. Arizona (attorney advertising)- In 1977, in Bates vs. Arizona, the Supreme Court held 5-4 that such advertising was protected by the First Amendment; prior to that time, lawyers were forbidden to advertise or to solicit clients. Apart from a handful of "ambulance chasers", only the shysters went further than sending a business card to a potential client or joining the rights clubs. Clearly, the disintegration accelerated after the Bates case. But Mr. Olson's argument that the decision itself changed legal ethics attributes to it. The author ignores the difference between a profession, like the law, and a trade or business where advertising is more acceptable. Contingency fees- The term "contingency fee" refers to a type of fee arrangement in a case in which an attorney or firm agrees that the payment of legal fees will be contingent upon the successful outcome of the case. Mr. Olson would be on even sounder ground if he were to expand his discussion and say that a contingency fee is unethical and dishonest, and ought to be unlawful whenever liability is certain , as it often is. Admittedly, unless the measure of damages is fixed by statute, the amount of a recovery can vary, even when liability is certain. A highly experienced litigator is likely to get a higher settlement or verdict than an amateur. But if a lawyer soliciting a case is required to tell a client whenever liability is certain, that should at least rule out unconscionable contingency fees of 33% and 50% in those certain-recovery cases. Mr. Olson contrasts lawyers' contingency fees with the ethical prohibition against doctors charging a fee contingent on the success of the treatment of a patient.

Why Shouldn't Corporations Be Socially Responsible(Christopher Stone)(p. 179-182)

As the title indicates, below is a summary of the four prominent arguments used to support the assertion that corporations have no social responsibility Christopher Stone starts off by noting that in "ordinary morals" people are expected to act in ways that benefit others as well and that such acts are usually held in high esteem by society. With this essay he sought to critically appraise the four positions which deny social responsibility for corporations. According to these positions corporations should be "steered almost wholly by profit" instead of focusing on the general well being of society and/or the environments in which they operate. Corporations should focus only on those acts which benefit themselves directly. 1. The Promissory Argument This argument states that corporations have an implied 'promise' to their stock-/shareholders to maximise profits. Accordingly management has the sole responsibility of keeping that promise - acting in ways that seek to maximisestockholders' profits. Christopher Stone is of the opinion that this view is mistaken. He argues that very few stockholders invest their money in a corporation and receive a promise from management that profits will be maximised. He argues also that even such a promise were made it wouldn't have been made directly to the stockholder since very few stockholders invest their money directly into a corporation. Consider that the shares anyone owns have probably been around for many many years and have been passed on to many hands/owners. Who then does the corporation owe the keeping of the promise to? Not only that but since a corporation's management changes ever now and then, the 'new' managers may simply not hold the view that a corporation's sole purpose is to maximise profits.Stone further makes another point against this view. The first being that even if we inferred that a promise has been made and needs to be kept, there is no reason why we can't accept that "sometimes it is ... morally justified to break promises in the furtherance of other social interests of higher concern. ... My promise to appear in class on time would not ordinarily justify me from refusing to give aid to a drowning man." Stone makes this point to drive another home: the fact that a promise has been made to maximise profits does not mean in each and every act and each and every possible way one must seek to maximise profits even if its means poisoning consumers and polluting the environment; again, even if that was the express promise made by management to stockholders, who of us would consider it a respectable and/or morally justifiable promise?2. The Agency Argument This is an argument which has among its proponents Milton Friedman. It states that stockholders appoint management as their agents. Milton Friedman expressed this position, in his 1970 New York Times article, as follows: "The key point is that, in his capacity as a corporate executive, the manager is the agent of the individuals who own the corporation or establish the ... institution, and his primary responsibility is to them." Stone considers Friedman's view wrong "both as to the state of the law (the directors are not mere agents of the shareholders) and on his assumption as to the facts of corporate life (... management is more often using its control over the proxy machinery to designate who the directors shall be, rather than the other way around)." He says Friedman's argument is basically that management "ought to morally to consider themselves more the agents for the shareholders than for the customers, creditors, the state, or the corporation." Stone then asks why this should be the case? - and to whatextent ought this to be the case? According to Stone the agency argument is not only undermined by its inconclusiveness but also by corporate practice. He points out that oftentimes shareholders find themselves at odds with the company's management and having to take each other to court or forcing votes at annual general meetings because they have differing opinions as to which direction the corporation must follow. "If the managers truly considered themselves the agents of the shareholders, as agents they would be expected to show an interest in determining how their principals [that is, the shareholders] wanted them to act - and acted accordingly" stone points out.3. The Role Argument This argument is based on roles - the roles that people play and the obligations that attach themselves to the roles in question. In moral reasoning people are expected to fulfil certain obligations/duties, even without expressly assuming them, just based on the roles or status they occupy. Stone thinks this is a somewhat stronger argument provided by the proponents of "anti-social responsibility" because this argument closely resembles the facts. According to this reasoning since management, as has been shown above, never made a promise to the shareholders to maximise profits, "nor did the shareholders designate the directors their agents for this express purpose", management then acts only as fiduciaries. As fiduciaries management then has a legal responsibility not to engage in "self-dealing" and not to "waste" the assets of the corporation. Stone then points out those who are for social responsibility do not, as is implied by this argument, expect management to assume expenditures thatwould "expose the officers to legal liability; what we are talking about are expenditures on ... pollution control, above the amount the company is required to pay by law" but not in excess of what is considered reasonable and may lead to a violation of management's fiduciary duties ('amount required by law' < 'expenditure incurred' < 'expenditure that would violate fiduciary duties'). To problematise the role argument Stone asks this question: "What is there about assuming the role of corporate officer that makes it immoral for a manager to involve a corporation in these expenditures [that is, expenditures for social responsibility]?" A man who has the role of fatherhood and therefore responsibilities towards his children cannot use that as a "moral argument ... to leave unsightly refuse piled on his lawn, spilling over into the street, on the plea that he had obligations to give every moment of his attention to his children, and was thus too busy to cart his refuse away." Why then do those who make this argument expect it tocarry moral weight on the basis that managers are busy discharging their obligations to shareholders to undo the damage caused to the environment by their activities? Stone considers the agency argument to suffer "from the problem that the strongest moral obligations one can discover" for it "have at most only prima facie force, and it is not apparent why those obligations should predominate over some contrary social obligations that could be advanced." 4. The Polestar Argument Stone considers this to be the strongest moral argument that can be advanced by those who are against corporations assuming social responsibilities. This argument says "if the managers act in such a fashion as to maximise profits - if they act as though they had promised the shareholders they would do so - then it will be best for all of us." Note: a pole star is a directing principle. This argument then is called a pole star argument because, it is claimed, advancing the interests of shareholders will be a "means of charting acourse toward what is best for the society as a whole." Increased profits mean increased tax revenue due to governments which can in turn be used by the state to pursue social ends (to benefit the poor, for example). Stone points out that there are many assumptions that need to be made for this argument to hold water, and that it has an implicit positivism - "a feeling ... that moral judgments are peculiar, arbitrary, or vague - perhaps even 'meaningless' in the philosophic sense of not being amenable to rational discussion." For those who make this argument "profits (or sales, or price-earnings ratios [in a nutshell quantifiable data]) at least provide some solid, tangible standard by which participants in the organisation can measure their successes and failures" rather than relying on arbitrary moral claims. Another variant of this argument says managers and directors, even if they did possess the skills and expertise, do not have the authority to decide for society as a whole. Stone points out that Friedmanmakes this point when he says "if a corporate director took 'social purposes' into account, he would become 'in effect a public employee, a civil servant.'" Stone excuses himself from "getting deeply involved in each of these arguments" and points out that indeed policy choices (decisions made for society as a whole) are vague. However, he notes that there a number of cases/decisions taken by directors in pursuit of profit which have implications for society as a whole and as a result could be construed to be for "social purposes." He says though those who advance these arguments have ground to stand, "their essential failure is in not pursuing the alternatives." Following Friedman, Stone agrees that "to the extent" that the markets and the law can be relied upon to manage corporations to be "within desirable bounds" it is preferable to let corporations service the needs of society than to give that responsibility to unelected "public officials" [that is, managers who pursue social ends without a mandateto unelected "public officials" [that is, managers who pursue social ends without a mandate from society]. Stone includes the to "the extent" to point out that there are indeed situations where both the law and markets fail dismally to "keep corporations within desirable bounds." According to him those who are against social responsibility fail to note that the existence of such points to the need to consider "alternative measures of corporate control."

Morality, Money and Motor Cars (p. 399)

Contrary to the three views of corporate responsibility, the philosopher Norman Bowie believes that businesses have no special obligation to the environment except those defined by the law (the letter of the law, not the spirit). In his article, "Morality, Money, and Motor Cars", he says that corporations have only the responsibility to respond to consumer demand. Bowie makes this point by using the example of cars. He asks whether auto manufacturers are morally obligated to produce a maximally safe car. He thinks (as I suspect you might as well) that the answer is no. Consumers ought to be able to buy a less safe car if they are not willing to pay a higher price for the safest possible car. The market reflects, Bowie thinks, that there are a range of cars that provide various levels of safety to their drivers because this is what consumers want. If I want to pay a low price, and I am willing to drive a very unsafe car, like the Ford Pinto, for example, I should be able to trade away my own safety for a lower price. Our old friend Milton Friedman makes this exact case. Bowie wants to make the same argument for environmentally friendly products. He says that consumers might want to trade away environmental-friendliness for a lower price. Now whether consumers were aware of the danger of driving the pinto is a separate issue, and whether consumers understand the environmental impact of various products is a point that Denis Arnold and Keith Bustos will make soon enough. But let's stay focused on Bowie's argument for now. He claims that like safe cars, if consumers demand environmentally friendly products, the market will produce them, but this does not mean that corporations have any moral obligation to do so. "Environmentalists, like government officials, employees, and stockholders, expect that business firms and officials have moral obligations to obey the law, avoid negligent behavior, and tell the truth. In sum, although many business decisions have harmed the environment, these decisions violated no environmental moral obligations. If a corporation is negligent in providing for worker safety, we do not say the corporation violated a special obligation to employees; we say that it violated its obligation to avoid negligent behavior."1 Because consumers don't demand environmentally friendly products, he says, corporations are under no obligation to produce them. And corporations have no responsibility to refrain from producing environmentally dangerous products if consumers continue to buy them. (He does not mention whether consumers should be aware of these dangers, nor whether corporations have any obligation to reveal this information.) Further, he claims that the fact that environmentally friendly products are often more expensive than competing products is a market failure that is the responsibility of the government to correct. "More important, they might argue that environmentally friendly products are at a disadvantage in the marketplace because they have public good characteristics. After all, the best situation for the individual is one where most other people use environmentally friendly products but he or she does not, hence reaping the benefit of lower cost and convenience. Since everyone reasons this way, the real demand for environmentally friendly products cannot be registered in the market. Everyone is understating the value of his or her preference for environmentally friendly products. Hence, companies cannot conclude from market behavior that the environmentally unfriendly products are preferred. Suppose the environmental critics are right that the public goods characteristic of environmentally friendly products creates a market failure. . . . Traditionally it is the function of the government to correct for market failure. If the market cannot register the true desires of consumers, let them register their preferences in the political arena. Even fairly conservative economic thinkers allow government a legitimate role in correcting market failure."2 So it is up to consumers, by voting, to bring about laws that will protect the environment from harmful products by forcing corporations to comply with stricter environmental regulations. With this argument, Bowie places the responsibility of protecting the environment squarely on consumers. This view seems to let corporations completely off the hook. They don't have to worry about environmental concerns, they only have to respond to consumer demand and obey the law. But, as Bowie says, the problem with this in practice is that "far too many corporations try to have their cake and eat it too. They argue that it is the job of government to correct for market failure and then use their influence and money to defeat or water down regulations designed to conserve and protect the environment. They argue that consumers should decide how much conservation and protection the environment should have, and then they try to interfere with the exercise of that choice in the political arena. Such behavior is inconsistent and ethically inappropriate."3 If corporations are going to leave it up to the government to protect the environment, and if they are going to take seriously the claim that environmental regulations are an expression of the desires of consumers, then they have an ethical obligation not to interfere with that expression. This means that lobbying against environmental regulations—a common practice among the most powerful corporations—is unethical. Bowie is confident that business will be resistant to this idea, so he proposes that in order to limit the necessity for government intervention, businesses have an additional special obligation to educate consumers about the environmental harms or benefits of their products, and thereby to promote environmentally responsible consumer behavior. This would work to correct the market failure of environmentally friendly products, thereby reducing the necessity for government to correct it. This is an even more serious concern since Citizens United v. FEC, since now corporations are no longer limited in the amount of money they can spend to further their political goals. Though Bowie's view at first seems to put all the moral responsibility on consumers and removes it from corporations, the moral constraint of restraining the corporate desire to meddle in politics, coupled with the responsibility to promote environmentally responsible consumer behavior may actually be more limiting to business than if we just presume instead that businesses have a moral responsibility to the environment themselves. Consider that Bowie's position would result in a great deal more governmental regulation of businesses. Consider also that government is often inefficient at enacting the desires of consumers through the creation of environmental regulation. Even unfettered by corporate efforts to "defeat or water down" those regulations, it would still take a long time and a lot of resources to generate and enforce these regulations. Business managers have two choices, if they do not want these formal limitations placed on them, and enforced under penalty of law, then they must limit themselves and act under the assumption that they have moral obligations to the environment. Or they must accept that they have ethical obligations to both stay out of the political arena and to educate consumers about environmentally responsible behavior.

Where do nonhumans fit in the ethical discussion of ethics and the environment? (p. 405) (i.e., the meat industry)

In an essay entitled "The Place of Nonhumans in Environmental Issues", in Honest Work, Peter Singer asserts that human decision-making must include a consideration of the welfare of nonhuman organisms if we are to claim moral consistency, and he compares our habitual heedlessness towards animal pain to the attitudes of slaveholders. Peter Singer has popularized the term speciesism to describe this anthropocentric blind spot. In situations both large-scale and small, from the location of a building project or the wholesale extermination of pests, to the daily consumption of meat for our pleasure, he notes that we ignore the pain and damage we cause to individuals and populations of nonhumans. He makes a case that such prejudice is equivalent to racism and that our use and abuse of animals for food, and for other purposes and in other circumstances is morally equivalent to slavery. Singer begins by reminding us that, although much human environmental destruction bites us in our human posterior, our nonhuman neighbors get it in the neck. He calls us to reflect on our prerogative to limit our decision-making to issues directly affecting us. This ignores the damage to individuals and populations of other organisms. For example, in the example of a habitat-destroying construction project, in contemplating whether and how to move proceed, should we weigh the homelessness and deracination of the animals qua animals, or merely the loss of hunting/fishing revenue? He goes on to assert that our obliviousness to animal suffering, albeit ancient, is without logic, and immoral. He points out that believing that a hurtful action's moral implications can be inferred from the species of the victim is exactly parallel to slave-owners' stance towards the importance of suffering by enslaved Africans. Singer then clarifies the subtle point that giving equal weight to the interests of two individuals or groups is different from saying that they are equal. In specifying what he means by interests (he cautiously avoids rights) requiring evaluation, he limits the field to organisms that can subjectively experience pleasure/pain. There may be scientific suggestions of botanical potential for pain sensations (and he acknowledges this), but his definition is a clear enough delineation for the current state of human knowledge. If it clearly feels pain, then its pain has significance. Singer also acknowledges that we may assess two different lives with different values. He also admits the inadequacy of all of our current means and methods of arriving at such valuations. He elucidates his principle of similarity in the degree of discomfort which two entities experience, a concept that he recognizes poses dilemmas for measurement. However, he contends that we perform analogous comparisons regularly, taking into account such vague differences as degree of benefit from a particular action. Although such comparisons undertaken between species are even more challenging, Singer insists that we not avoid them simply because they are imprecise. With this given, Singer challenges us to consider all the instances wherein our decision-making could be shaped by an examination of the pain potential for nonhumans. Pest control and lumbering are two examples he offers where our choices are based on cost and convenience, and could be made differently to reduce the pain to nonhumans. The most intimate relationship that we have with animals, Singer notes, is our daily consumption of meat. The list of cruelties we perpetrate on animals to ensure swift weight gain, high volume production of milk or eggs, or meat of a character to please, is long, detailed, disturbing, and not novel to anyone in this generation. As he points out, no rationale exists for these appalling animal husbandry conditions, apart from taste and cost, given plant-based alternatives. Singer finishes by drawing us back to his analogy with slave holding. He calls on us to ask ourselves; if we continue to eat (and abuse) animals on the grounds that their pain is less morally disturbing than that of a human, how are we different from slave-owners who held the pain of their enslaved African captives to be less than that of white folks?

Concept of consumer demand (John Kenneth Galbraith) - The Dependency Effect

In this text, Galbraith criticizes the neoclassical theories about product demand and the consumer sovereignty in the market. These neoclassical economical theories affirm that the customer is the entity that rules the market because it is he and his wants the ones that create the demand of a product. Galbraith denies this, arguing that it is not the consumer who spontaneously creates his wants: it is the same entity of production the one that creates the wants and later sells and satisfies them. For Galbraith it is impossible to defend production as an entity that satisfies wants when that same production is creating the wants that will later satisfy. The production is not really satisfying anything because if it had not created the want in the first place, it would not be satisfying it. The consumer, by himself, never had the urgency of the want that he is satisfying. Galbraith argues his theory of "the production as a creator of wants" supporting on two economists: John Maynard Keynes and James Duesenberry. The first one says that emulation plays a very important role on want creation: "One man's consumption becomes his neighbor's wish", this means that the same process that satisfies one's want, creates this same want on another person; so the more that a want is satisfied, the more that it grows. Duesenberry goes a little bit farther than this: he states that the basic social goal of modern society is the constant development of a higher standard of living. This means that, because of this "high standard of living" that society takes almost as if it were part of its moral structure, man is evaluated by the products he possesses and because of the constant production of newer and higher standard commodities; man needs to buy more to maintain his prestige. Although Duesenberry does go a little bit far, his argument implies that production satisfies and creates the costumer's wants. But more active than the emulation, as a link between production and wants, is the modern advertising and salesmanship. For Galbraith, it is impossible that these two can be reconciled with the consumer created wants because their basic function is precisely to create the wants. Every new consumer product has to be introduced into the market with an advertising campaign that is apt to provoke an interest on the consumer. And the outlay of these campaigns is incredibly high; producers spend absurd amounts of money on advertising, so "Is a new breakfast cereal or detergent so much wanted if so much must be spent to compel in the consumer the sense of want?" This shows perfectly why it is ridiculous to keep on following the conventional wisdom's affirmations: if producers spend billions advertising a product, if they have salesmen pressuring the equation and then comes the emulation factor that affects the product from the outside, then it is easily seen that those products are not as urgent as they seem to appear because if they were, they wouldn't need so many help to find a consumer; "A man who is hungry need never be told of his need for food". Advertisement for food is not needed when a man is dying of hunger; it is only needed for those products (Marx's "commodities") that are far away from being really natural, urgent and that man does not even know that he wants them. The point to which Galbraith arrives to is that welfare is not greater in a society with a higher level of production than in another with a lower one. This is because the higher the level of production gets, it produces a higher level of want creation which requires a higher level of want satisfaction, and this is called by Galbraith "the Dependence Effect"; wants depend directly from the process of production that intends to satisfy it.

Corporate duty to address human rights in other countries? (NBA / China example)

It was a tough week for U.S. companies doing business in China. Tiffany canceled an ad campaign because the model had a hand over her right eye, prompting critics in China to complain it looked like she was supporting pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Blizzard Activision banned an esports player for one year for expressing support for Hong Kong — and also fired the announcers who interviewed the video game champ. Apple banned pro-democracy singers from selling on Hong Kong iTunes. The National Basketball Association (NBA) got into the worst trouble of all. After Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted — and quickly deleted — a message of support for Hong Kong, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver issued contradictory statements defending the NBA's stance to Americans and apologizing to the Chinese. The state-run China Central Television rejected the peace offering, saying Morey had no "right to freedom of expression" on the issue, and suspended their NBA broadcasts. Pundits and politicians left, right and center attacked the NBA. What's going on, exactly? It's easy to condemn firms for meek apologies — and to criticize the NBA and others as willing tools of the Chinese regime, "submitting to authoritarianism" to make a buck. However, our research suggests even when companies want to support global democracy and human rights, they find it much harder than anticipated and trap themselves in unenviable choices. Our research has shown, time and again, how companies fail to live up to these lofty expectations. It's not for lack of trying. Instead, companies find the problems governments want them to solve are incredibly hard — and companies themselves suffer the political fallout when they can't get things right. Firms often find the only choices they have left are bad ones. For example, the NBA can support freedom of expression — but then it will potentially breach its fiduciary duty to team owners by cutting itself out of the lucrative Chinese market. Alternatively, it can support the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to control the narrative — but undercut everything the NBA brand claims to stand for. When firms look for a "middle way" out of these problems, they often end up upsetting everyone. This was the case with Silver's continued efforts to placate basketball players, fans, activists — and Beijing. Analysts see it getting tougher still for companies that want to do business in both democracies and nondemocracies. Nearly all multinational companies have built their global brand around moral agency: They want consumers to believe the company does the right thing at every stage of its business and in every place it does business. Very different businesses such as Apple, Vans, Tiffany, Activision and the NBA don't only sell products, but also an ideal of who the customers will become by enjoying their products. All those companies have gotten into trouble over Hong Kong and China. More generally, companies find carefully crafted domestic identities clash against incompatible political and cultural demands from nondemocratic states and customers in foreign markets. Most firms were aware of the differences, but were caught off guard by how deeply these complex politics would affect their bottom line. Even businesses such as the NBA — with a unique product — are reluctant to offend a particular market. This fear keeps those businesses from making straightforward decisions guided by their stated corporate philosophies. The bottom line? This clash of ideals and demands explains why companies can't force social change upon recalcitrant regimes by themselves. Still, our research suggests firms can help solve even the most complex peace, human rights and democracy problems. Companies are most likely to deliver benefits when the measures they take are concrete, focused on specific goals and build on existing corporate expertise. These measures are more likely to affect change when companies join in collective actions by the business community that complement international political campaigns. The 1980s anti-apartheid movement in South Africa is a good example. The business community played a key — but subsidiary — role in ending apartheid. Businesses avoided direct criticism by joining a broader campaign, rather than by organizing their own activities. Last week's spotlight was on companies navigating the Hong Kong protests, but that's not the only flash point for global business. Firms that try to do significant business in both democratic and nondemocratic markets are likely to see greater demands from their customers to be socially engaged, while investors push for ever more expansion into non-Western markets. Unless businesses act in parallel with governments that also support human rights and democracy, their vague corporate statements about supporting civil liberties and human rights will be exactly as inconsequential as they look at first glance.

Ethical issues in advertising regarding the image of women (Case 7.2 on p. 270)

Many ads seek to motivate women by suggesting that they are inadequate without a particular product. Women are portrayed as having no facial wrinkles, no lines, no blemishes-indeed no pores. In many ads a woman's worth is measured not by her intelligence or her character or even her natural appearance. Woman's worth is measured by how closely she approaches an ideal created by an advertising agency. Many ads also portray women as inferior to other women and to men. Women are seen as engaged in a constant competition with other women for the attention of men. When they are pictured with men, women are often shown as clinging to the male, as passive, as submissive. Men are seen in control, active, and dominant. Besides feelings of inadequacy, many ads also use guilt to motivate women. The "housewife" is constantly being chided because the laundry is not as white nor does it smell as clean as the neighbor's. Despite all of these demands, the woman still looks like a model.

"The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives."

Native American Proverb.

What is the essence of the "People or Penguins" article? (p. 395)

People or Penguins In the essay People or Penguins author William F. Baxter held the view that environmental issues should be human-centered and cost beneficial. In other words, his observations are that our affect on the environment is irrelevant except as it affects human interest. He also feels that we have no obligation to respect the balance of nature because no natural state of nature exists.

The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits for the Shareholders (Milton Friedman)(p, 174-178)

The Friedman doctrine, also called shareholder theory is a normative theory of business ethics advanced by economist Milton Friedman which holds that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.[1] This shareholder primacy approach views shareholders as the economic engine of the organization and the only group to which the firm is socially responsible. As such, the goal of the firm is to increase its profits and maximize returns to shareholders.[1] Friedman argues that the shareholders can then decide for themselves what social initiatives to take part in, rather than have an executive whom the shareholders appointed explicitly for business purposes decide such matters for them.

Negligent manufacture

The buyer claims that the design was adequate but that failure to inspect or some other careless conduct caused a dangerous product to leave the plant. A claim for negligent manufacture alleges that the manufacturer did not use reasonable care in manufacturing the product. A claim for a design defect under negligence alleges that the product is defective because it was designed without reasonable care. Falls under products liability, a tort law.

Negligent design

The buyer claims that the product injured her because the manufacturer designed it poorly. In the case of negligence in designing a product, the defendant is blameworthy for not designing its product in a safer manner. A manufacturer does not have the right to manufacture an inherently dangerous article when a method exists of manufacturing the same article without risk of harm. Falls under products liability, a tort law.

Products liability

The liability of manufacturers, sellers, and others for the injuries caused by defective products. It's a part of tort law injuries from products.

Ford Pinto Cost-Benefit Analysis for Liability (p. 293-295)

There was a time when the "made in Japan" label brought a predictable smirk of superiority to the face of most Americans. The quality of most Japanese products usually was as low as their price. In fact, few imports could match their domestic counterparts, the proud products of Yankee know-how. But by the late 1960s, an invasion of foreign-made goods chiseled a few worry lines into the countenance of the U.S. industry. In Detroit, worry was fast fading to panic as the Japanese, not to mention the Germans, began to gobble up more and more of the subcompact auto market. Never one to take a back seat to the competition, Ford Motor Company decided to meet the threat from abroad head-on. In 1968, Ford executives decided to produce the Pinto. Known inside the company as "Lee's car," after Ford president Lee Iacocca, the Pinto was to weigh no more than 2,000 pounds and cost no more than $2,000. Eager to have its subcompact ready for the 1971 model year, Ford decided to compress the normal drafting-board-to-showroom time of about three-and-a-half years into two. The compressed schedule meant that any design changes typically made before production-line tooling would have to be made during it. Before producing the Pinto, Ford crash-tested various prototypes, in part to learn whether they met a safety standard proposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to reduce fires from traffic collisions. This standard would have required that by 1972 all new autos be able to withstand a rear-end impact of 20mph without fuel loss, and that by 1973 they be able to withstand an impact of 30 mph. The prototypes all failed the 20-mph test. In 1970 Ford crash-tested the Pinto itself, and the result was the same: ruptured gas tanks and dangerous leaks. The only Pintos to pass the test had been modified in some way-for example, with a rubber bladder in the gas tank or a piece of steel between the tank and the rear bumper. Thus, Ford knew that the Pinto represented a serious fire hazard when struck from the rear, even in low-speed collisions. Ford officials faced a decision. Should they go ahead with the existing design, thereby meeting the production timetable but possibly jeopardizing consumer safety? Or should they delay production of the Pinto by redesigning the gas tank to make it safer and thus concede another year of subcompact dominance to foreign companies? Ford not only pushed ahead with the original design but stuck to it for the next six years. What explains Ford's decision? The evidence suggests that Ford relied, at least in part, on cost-benefit reasoning, which is an analysis in monetary terms of the expected costs and benefits of doing something. There were various ways of making the Pinto's gas tank safer. Although the estimated price of these safety improvements ranged from only $5 to $8 per vehicle, Ford evidently reasoned that the increased cost outweighed the benefits of a new tank design. How exactly did Ford reach that conclusion? We don't know for sure, but an internal report, "Fatalities Associated with Crash-Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires," reveals the cost-benefit reasoning that the company used in cases like this. This report was not written with the pinto in mind; rather, it concerns fuel leakage in rollover accidents (not rear-end collisions), and its computations applied to all Ford vehicles, not just the Pinto. Nevertheless, it illustrates the type of reasoning that was probably used in the Pinto case. In the "Fatalities" report, Ford engineers estimated the cost of technical improvements that would prevent gas tanks from leaking in rollover accidents to be $11 per vehicle. The authors go on to discuss various estimates of the number of people killed by fires from car rollovers before settling on the relatively low figure of 180 deaths per year. But given that number, how can the value of those individuals' lives be gauged? Can a dollars-and-cents figure be assigned to a human being? NHTSA thought so. In 1972, it estimated that society loses $200,725 every time a person is killed in an auto accident (adjusted for inflation, today's figure would, of course, be considerably higher). For its part, Ford has always denied that the Pinto is unsafe compared with other cars of its type and era. The company also points out that in every model year the Pinto met or surpassed the government's own standards. But what the company doesn't say is that successful lobbying by it and its industry associates was responsible for delaying for seven years the adoption of any NHTSA crash standard. Furthermore, Ford's critics claim that there were more than forty European and Japanese models in the Pinto price and weight range with safer gas-tank position. "Ford made an extremely irresponsible decision," concludes auto safety expert Byron Bloch, "when they placed such a weak tank in such a ridiculous location in such a soft rear end." Has the automobile industry learned a lesson from Ford's experience with the Pinto? Some observers thought not when, in February 1993, an Atlanta jury held the General Motors Corporation responsible for the death of a Georgia teenager in the fiery crash of one of its pickup trucks. At the trial, General Motors contended in its defense that when a drunk driver struck seventeen-year-old Shannon Moseley's truck in the side, it was the impact of the high-speed crash that killed Moseley. However, the jury was persuaded that Moseley survived the collision only to be consumed by a fire caused by his truck's defective fuel-tank design. Finding that the company had known that its "side-saddle" gas tanks which are mounted outside the rails of the truck's frame, are dangerously prone to rupture, the jury awarded $4.2 million in actual damages and $101 million in punitive damages to Moseley's parents. What undoubtedly swayed the jury was the testimony of former GM safety engineer Ronald E. Elwell. Although Elwell had testified in more than fifteen previous cases that the pickups were safe, this time he switched sides and told the jury that the company had known for years that the side-saddle design was defective but had intentionally hidden its knowledge and had not attempted to correct the problem. At the trial, company officials attempted to paint Elwell as a disgruntled employee, but his testimony was supported by videotapes of General Motors' own crash tests. After the verdict, General Motors said that it still stood behind the safety of its trucks and contended "that a full examination by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the technical issues in this matter will bear out our contention that the 1973-1987 full size pickup trucks do not have a safety related defect." Since then, however, the Department of Transportation has determined that GM pickups do pose a fire hazard and that they are more prone than competitors' pickups to catch fire when struck from the side. Still, GM has rejected requests to recall the pickups and repair them. Meanwhile, the Georgia Court of Appeals has thrown out the jury's verdict in the Shannon Moseley case on a legal technicality-despite ruling that the evidence submitted in the case showed that GM was aware that the gas tanks were hazardous but did not try to make them safer to save the expenses involved.

Employee Loyalty (p. 321-322)

WB: A is an act of whistle-blowing iff A is an act by an employee of informing the public of immoral or illegal behavior of an employer or supervisor. (241) Some (allegedly) controversial questions related to whistle-blowing: Is it morally right to report the shady or suspect practices of the organization one works for? Is a whistle-blower a stool pigeon or a dedicated citizen? Does a person have an obligation to the public that overrides his obligation to his employer or does he simply betray a loyalty and become a traitor if he reports his company? Central Question: When is it morally permissible to blow the whistle? Recall De George's principle: A person, S, is morally PERMITTED to blow the whistle if: the harm that will be done by the product to the public is serious and considerable; S makes S's concerns known to S's superiors; and getting no satisfaction from S's immediate superiors, S exhausts the channels available within the corporation, including going to the board of directors. Note especially clauses (2) and (3). De George is claiming here that a person must meet certain obligations of loyalty to one's company before he or she is morally permitted to blow the whistle on some feature of the company's operations. Why? Allegedly because each act of whistle-blowing is "seen as a violation of loyalty" to one's employer. Duska, however, rejects these so-called "loyalty" constraints on acts of whistle-blowing. Duska writes: However, I fail to see how one has an obligation of loyalty to one's company, so I disagree with their perception of the problem, and their starting point. The difference in perception is important because those who think employees have an obligation of loyalty to a company fail to take into account a relevant moral difference between persons and corporations and between corporations and other kinds of groups where loyalty is appropriate. I want to argue that one does not have an obligation of loyalty to a company, even a prima facie one, because companies are not the kind of things that are proper objects of loyalty. I then want to show that to make them objects of loyalty gives them a moral status they do not deserve and in raising their status, one lowers the status of the individuals who work for companies. (243) What is loyalty anyway? Duska has an interesting position on loyalty: Loyalty is ordinarily construed as a state of being constant and faithful in a relation implying trust or confidence, as a wife to husband, friend to friend, parent to child, lord to vassal, etc. According to John Ladd "it is not founded on just any casual relationship, but one a specific kind of relationship or tie. The ties that bind the persons together provide the basis of loyalty." I don't owe loyalty to just anyone I encounter. Rather I owe loyalty to persons with whom I have special relationships. I owe it to my children, my spouse, my parents, my friends and certain groups, those groups that are formed for the mutual enrichment of the members. It is important to recognize that in any relationship that demands loyalty, the relationship works both ways and involves mutual enrichment. Loyalty is incompatible with self-interest, because it is something that necessarily requires we go beyond self-interest. (243) Duska goes to claim that the relationship between you and your corporate employer is not one of mutual enrichment, thus bonds of loyalty are incapable or arising through nature of the relationship. A business or corporation does two things in the free enterprise system. It produces a good or service and makes a profit. The making of a profit, however, is the primary function of a business as a business.... People bound together in a business are not bound together for mutual fulfillment and support, but to divide labor so the business makes a profit. (243) The cold hard truth is that the goal of profit is what gives birth to a company and forms that particular group. Money is what ties the group together. But in such a commercialized venture, with such a goal there is no loyalty, or at least none need be expected. An employer will release an employee and an employee will walk away from an employer when it is profitable to do so. That's business. It is perfectly permissible. Contrast that with the ties between a lord and vassal [or a parent and her child]. A lord could not in good conscience wash his hands of his vassal, nor could a vassal in good conscience abandon his lord. What bound them was mutual enrichment, not profit. (244) Be able to explain Duska's distinction between DEVOTION TO ONE'S JOB and DEVOTION TO ONE'S COMPANY. What, then, is the nature of our obligations to our corporate employers? Here's what Duska has to say in response to this final question: One need hardly be an enemy of business to be suspicious of a demand of loyalty to something whose primary reason for existence is the making of profit. It is simply the case that I have no duty of loyalty to the business or organization. Rather I have a duty to return responsible work for fair wages. The commercialization of work dissolves the type of relationship that requires loyalty. It sets up merely contractual relationships. One sells one's labor but not one's self to a company or organization. (245)

Sustainability Reports

To evaluate an enterprise's responsiveness to economic, environmental, and social sustainability challenges

Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

U.S. law regulating behavior regarding the conduct of international business in the taking of bribes and other unethical actions. Makes it illegal to give bribes to foreign governments to get business. Created in 1977.

SOPA

Was a controversial proposed United States congressional bill to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to combat online copyright infringement and online trafficking in counterfeit goods. Introduced on October 26, 2011 by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), provisions included the requesting of court orders to bar advertising networks and payment facilities from conducting business with infringing websites, and web search engines from linking to the websites, and court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to the websites. The proposed law would have expanded existing criminal laws to include unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content, imposing a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Genetically modified crops and ethics (p. 410) (Monsanto's history vs. the farmer) (Monsanto - agent orange, roundup, GMOs, and finally animal feed)

Vietnam continues to roll out the red carpet for foreign biotech giants, including the infamous Monsanto, to sell the controversial genetically modified (GM) corn varieties in the country. Critics say that by welcoming Monsanto, Vietnam has been too nice to the main manufacturer of Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used during the Vietnam War that left a devastating legacy still claiming victims today.According to Vietnamese media reports, in August that country's agriculture ministry approved the imports of four corn varieties engineered for food and animal feed processing: MON 89034 and NK 603, products of DeKalb Vietnam (a subsidiary of U.S. multinational Monsanto), and GA 21 and MIR 162 from the Swiss firm Syngenta.In 2006, the Vietnamese government formulated an ambitious plan to develop GM crops as part of a "major program for the development and application of biotechnology in agriculture and rural development." Under the blueprint, Vietnam is looking to cultivate its first GM crops by 2015 and have 30-50 percent of the country's farmland covered with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) by 2020. Environmental activists have noted the irony that just as Americans and people elsewhere around the world are revolting against GMOs in greater numbers, Vietnam is throwing away its great advantage as a non-GMO producer. "Increasingly countries around the world are rejecting GMOs, with public opposition growing daily. Across Europe and much of Asia, Latin America and Africa, people and often their governments are rejecting GMO seeds as an old technology that has failed to deliver on its promises," said Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, senior scientist at the U.S.-based Pesticide Action Network North America. Monsanto was the main manufacturer of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975. Vietnam claims the toxic defoliant is still killing victims today. Between 2.1 to 4.8 million Vietnamese were directly exposed to Agent Orange and other chemicals that have been linked to cancers, birth defects, and other chronic diseases during the war, according to the Vietnam Red Cross. Activists claim that introducing Monsanto's modified corn and the toxic weed killer Roundup Monsanto plugs for use along with its crops could signal a repeat of the tragedy of Agent Orange. "It's ironic that Vietnam is still suffering from the Agent Orange herbicide produced by Monsanto, unleashed during the war. It turns out that Roundup herbicide, also produced by Monsanto, and used on most GMO crops, is also linked to birth defects," said Jeffrey Smith, author of the bestselling Seeds of Deception and founder and executive director of the California, U.S.-based NGO Institute for Responsible Technology. "This evidence is found in Monsanto's own research, as well as experience today in Argentina and other countries where populations are experiencing a skyrocketing of birth defects when exposed to this dangerous weed killer. Lab studies have demonstrated that exposing embryos to Roundup causes the same type of birth defects experience by the peasants living near the Roundup sprayed fields. Similarly, livestock consuming Roundup ready crops have high incidences the same type of birth defects," Smith said. Activists say the GMO corn varieties that have been recently approved in Vietnam are just the tip of the iceberg. As these GMO companies make regulatory headway into Vietnam, and establish precedent for government approval of their products, they will soon be pushing more dangerous GMO/herbicide products, they say. Rather than reducing the need for pesticides, genetically engineered (GE) crops have led to rising use of herbicides. Herbicide-resistant seeds require a massive increase in herbicide use that has been linked to significant environmental and public health concerns.

Proposition

when something goes wrong peoplewant someone to blame

Tort Law

Law that deals with harm to a person or a person's property. Tort law is the area of the law that covers most civil suits. In general, any claim that arises in civil court, with the exception of contractual disputes, falls under tort law. The concept of tort law is to redress a wrong done to a person and provide relief from the wrongful acts of others, usually by awarding monetary damages as compensation. The original intent of tort is to provide full compensation for proved harms. Lawsuits involving contracts fall under contract law. Tort law requires those who are found to be at fault for harming others to compensate the victims. Typical harms include the loss of past or future income, payment of medical expenses, and payment for pain and suffering. There may also be additional punitive damages that are meant to punish the plaintiff in excess of full compensation.

The Federal Trade Commission Act

The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 was a United States federal law which established the Federal Trade Commission. The Act was signed into law by US President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 and outlaws unfair methods of competition and unfair acts or practices that affect commerce. The Federal Trade Commission Act is the primary statute of the Commission. Under this Act, as amended, the Commission is empowered, among other things, to (a) prevent unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce; (b) seek monetary redress and other relief for conduct injurious to consumers; (c) prescribe rules defining with specificity acts or practices that are unfair or deceptive, and establishing requirements designed to prevent such acts or practices; (d) gather and compile information and conduct investigations relating to the organization, business, practices, and management of entities engaged in commerce; and (e) make reports and legislative recommendations to Congress and the public. A number of other statutes listed here are enforced under the FTC Act.

Strict liability

The legal responsibility for damage or injury even if you are not negligent. Strict liability is a legal doctrine that holds a party responsible for their actions or products, without the plaintiff having to prove negligence or fault. When someone partakes in ultrahazardous activities such as keeping wild animals, using explosives, or making defective products, then they may be held liable if someone else is injured. Even if the defendant took necessary precautions and followed safety requirements, strict liability crimes are unique in that they would still hold the defendant responsible. Due to the nature of the activity, the defendant should be able to foresee that a person could be harmed by it. A type of tort law.

No-fault insurance

coverage requiring that parties to an automobile accident be indemnified by their own insurance company regardless of who is at fault. No-fault insurance, sometimes referred to as personal injury protection insurance (PIP), can help cover you and your passengers' medical expenses, loss of income and more in the event of an accident, no matter who is found "at fault." That last part is important and sets no-fault insurance apart from other types of auto insurance - such as comprehensive, collision and liability - which reimburse for damages depending on who is determined to be "at fault" in the accident. As long as the accident is covered within the terms of your policy, PIP coverage pays for medical bills, income losses and other related expenses incurred by you or your passengers (after your deductible, and up to your covered limit).

Marketing to Customers

Customer marketing refers to any marketing activity or campaign directed at existing customers, specifically designed to drive retention, customer loyalty, advocacy, growth and community participation.

John Locke on the concept of property

For Locke, our notion of property is inseparable from our notion of labor. If you have invested work into the creation of something, if it is what it is because of your labor, then it ought to belong to you.

Fear of Living (p. 287 only)

In January 1967, the first Apollo spacecraft caught fire during a test on the launchpad. Three astronauts were killed. The Apollo disaster was not graven on the public mind as a rebuke to America's confidence in technology, or taken as the occasion to preach that Americans must learn the limits to their energy and power. Nineteen years later, the space shuttle Challenger was destroyed before our eyes on television. It was a spectacular tragedy, the result of human miscalculation and technical failure, neither of which should have been present, perhaps, but both of which are understood risks in the still dangerous enterprise of space flight. In the 19 years between these tragedies, the idea that our individual lives and the nation's life can and should be risk-free has grown to be an obsession, driven far and deep into American attitudes. Indeed, the desire for a risk-free society is one of the most debilitating influences in America today, progressively enfeebling the economy with a mass of safety regulations and a widespread-fear of liability rulings, and threatening to create an unbuoyant and uninventive society. As many studies show, this is strikingly an American phenomenon, one that seems to have taken root in yet another distortion of the philosophy of rights underlying the Constitution, as if the Declaration of Independence had been rewritten to include freedom from risk among the self-evident rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This morbid aversion to risk calls into question how Americans now envision the destiny of their country. If America's new timorousness had prevailed among the vikings, their ships with the bold prows but frail hulls would have been declared unseaworthy. The Norsemen would have stayed home and jogged. There once was, but there is not now, a promise of saga in America. Its literature has retreated into a preoccupation with private anxieties and fretting.

Milton Friedman - people are responsible for pollution, not producers. (p. 397)

In fact, the people responsible for pollution are consumers, not producers. They create, as it were, demand for pollution. People who use electricity are responsible for the smoke that comes out of the stacks of generating plants.

"Foucault and the Panopticon" (Jeremy Bentham)

The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed the first panopticon in the hopes of improving dismal conditions in the prisons of his day. At the center of a huge octagon stood a tower, from which the guards could monitor any cell. Ringed around the tower were the prisoners in their cells, entirely visible to the guards (any largely visible to one another). In fact, many prisons that were built in the United States in the 1960w and 1970s followed closely the architectural model that was first designed and drawn by Bentham. But Bentham did not anticipate the effects of the human psyche that constant surveillance would have. Unfortunately, today the possibilities of such constant surveillance grow and grow. In his great study of the emergence of the modern prison, the twentieth-century French philosopher Foucault has a chilling meditation on the panopticon: Hence the effect of the panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. To achieve this, it is at once too much and too little that the prisoners should be constantly observed by an inspector; too little, for what matters is that he knows himself to be observed; too much, because he has no need in fact of being so. In view of this, Bentham laid down the principle that power should be visible and unverifiable. Visible: the inmate will constantly have before his eyes the tall outline of the central tower from which he is spied upon. Unverifiable: the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.

Ethical issues with corporate freebies to teachers for use in the classroom (Case 7.3, p. 272)

This case has identified one major problem within the inadequacies of schools systems inregards to providing teachers with learning materials they require to properly educate students.This has led to utilizing corporations materials as outside sources in order to supplementeducational materials not provided by city, state, or federal educational resources. This hascreated school systems and teachers utilizing products developed by big corporations with hopesof helping their students' academic curriculum. However, these materials are found to contain amajority of advertising data.

Seven theses for business ethics in the Information Age

Theses 1: The IT Head-in-the-sand Syndrome - Many businesses either fail to realize that we have entered the Information Age or fail to appreciate its importance. Theses 2: The abdication of IT ethical responsibility - The lack of awareness of the ethical implications of the information age is what I call the "myth of amoral computing and information technology." The myth says that computers are not good or bad, information systems are not good or bad- they simply have a logic and rationale of their own. Theses 3: Where are there business ethicists when you need them? - The task of the business ethicist in the present period of transition- and a tasking which few are engaged- is to help anticipate the developments and ease the transition by not losing sight of the effects on people. Theses 4: Surmounting the information nexus - If by "information" we mean not simply data but useful data, we see immediately that what we are interested in is useful information. Information, as generally used, stands for true knowledge in some areas. Its opposites are disinformation, misinformation, and falsehood. Information is not simply data, but data that represents reality. It's true and not false. Two virtues appear immediately. One is truth and the other is accuracy. Theses 5: Confronting the communication complex - Information is not useful, even if truthful and accurate, unless it is used. Hence, it needs to be communicated. The communication process, which is developing at an exponential rate, is central to the Information Age. But there are elements of communication that pose their own ethical issues: communication of what, to whom, in what form? Theses 6: The American information privacy schizophrenia - The U.S. is schizophrenic about information privacy, wanting it in theory and giving it away in practice. Information must be communicated, but it also must be about something. Information about people has become much more important than it was previously because of the great opportunity for a revolution in marketing in which manufacturers can target potential customers in ways not previously possible. Theses 7: Mickey Mouse isn't a program - Information is very difficult from machines and tangible products, and so requires a new conception of property and property protection applicable to it. Until fairly recently, a copyright granted protection to the expression of ideas in books and similar forms for 28 years. The protected period was then changed to the life of the author plus 50 years and to 75 years for a corporate author. In 1998, Congress extended the already-extended period, to the life of the author plus 70 years and to 95 years for a corporate author. The change came just in time to save Mickey Mouse from falling to the public domain, much to the pleasure of the Walt Disney Company.

Marketing to Millennials

(A brief interview with the Chairman of Nestle) "If you look at the millennials, they are the first generation now who are willing consciously to spend more for better quality, for sustainability, for traceability. I think there is a change," the chairman told CNBC. "I think if you're looking at the success stories in the food industry lately you will see that those successes are normally in products which have a relatively high price and it's basically coming from the new generation. So I would say from this respect there is a change." A 2015 global online survey by Nielson reflected the chairman's comments, with research showing that 66% of the 30,000-plus respondents said they would be willing to pay extra for sustainable goods. "Twenty years ago, where the only argument was price, this has moved a little bit. Doesn't mean that - in the big mainstream you still have price and unfortunately I would say retailers have not realized this sufficiently." "Retailers are still fighting only on price, that's why we have this deflationary environment. If you see the confrontation we still have- whether that's in the U.K. or whether it's here in France- it's all about one single thing: price." "So retailers are living 20 years in the past but the modern consumers are really much more willing to recognize quality, sustainability, and traceability."

Medical malpractice awards

A licensed physician attends four years of medical school and completes up to seven years of residency training to learn how to effectively and safely treat patients. Not only is the educational process rigorous, but state medical boards closely oversee physicians' conduct to prevent harm to patients. When, despite these systemic protections, patients are harmed, one recourse for an injured patient is to file a medical malpractice claim. An injured patient must prove the following four elements to be successful in a medical malpractice claim: (1) That the doctor owed the patient a duty of care; (2) That the doctor breached the duty to provide adequate care owed to the patient; (3) That the doctor's action caused the patient's injury; and (4) That the patient suffered an injury that resulted in damages. A patient in a medical malpractice case must prove that her injury resulted in economic or physical harm. There are three types of damage awards available in a medical malpractice case: (1) compensatory damages for economic loss, such as past and future medical costs, out-of-pocket expenses related to the injury, and lost wages; (2) non-economic damages for "pain and suffering;" or (3) punitive damages, which are designed to punish the offending doctor and dissuade other doctors from making similar mistakes.

Management as fiduciaries and agents theory v. theory that they have social responsibility duties

Agency theory describes the problems that occur when one party represents another in business but holds different views on key business issues or different interests from the principal. The agent, acting on behalf of another party, may disagree about the best course of action and allow personal beliefs to influence the outcome of a transaction. The agent may also choose to act in self-interest instead of the principal's interests. This may result in conflict between the two parties and might be an agency problem. Agency theory tends to focus mainly on the interest of shareholders.Stakeholder theory describes the composition of organizations as a collection of various individual groups with different interests. These interests, taken together, represent the will of the organization. As much as possible, business decisions should consider the interests of this collective group and advance overall cooperation. Conflict represents an erosion of these interests. Bringing these distinct groups together to reach an agreement may not always be possible, so business decisions must consider each point of view and optimize the decision-making to include all voices.With agency theory, there are differences in what the principal and the agent think is the best course of action, also known as the principal-agent problem. The agent theory can arise in such cases as portfolio managers—the agents—managing assets on behalf of an individual or company—the principal. Agency loss comes about when the principal suggests a loss happened due to an agent's actions that were not in the best interest of the principal. With stakeholder theory, there's a difference in the priorities for stakeholders, either internal or external. Internal stakeholders can include employees, investors or owners. External stakeholders include those that are affected by a company's decisions, such as suppliers or creditors.An example would include a conflict between company management and shareholders. The management may make decisions that do not necessarily enhance shareholder value, which is in conflict with shareholder interests. Performance-based compensation, which ties management incentives to shareholder value, is one way that companies look to address the stakeholder theory. However, this does come without its own issues, which includes trying to boost short-term performance at the sacrifice of long-term growth.

Conspicuous Consumption

Conspicuous consumption is the practice of purchasing goods or services to publicly display wealth rather than to cover basic needs. The word 'Conspicuous' here means lavish or wasteful spending. This kind of spending is generally made by people who have considerable amount of disposable income to spend on goods and services which are not necessary, but are more luxurious in nature. The concept is not new and has been part of society for long. This particular type of consumption is typically associated with the rich and wealthy and has only grown with time.

The History of Bribes (p. 354) and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (p. 357) - makes it illegal to give bribes to foreign governments to get business

Bribes- socially disapproved inducements of official action meant to be gratuitously exercised-are ancient. The bribe has a history, divisible into discernible epochs. From approximately 3000 B.C. to 1000 A.D. the idea of non reciprocity struggles against the norms of reciprocation which cement societies whose rulers are both judges and the recipients of offerings. In the second period from, say, 1000 A.D. to 1550 A.D., the anti bribery ideal is dominant in religious, legal, and literary expressions; its active enforcement is attempted in successive ways of reformation. The third period of the idea, as far as English-speaking people are concerned, begins in the sixteenth century with its domestication in English bibles and English plays and English law and ends in the eighteenth century with its proclamation as a norm for the English empire. The Fourth stage is the American, when the heirs of the successive reformations and of English politics begin to apply it and then to expand its sway until it is asserted as an American norm around the earth; and the rest of the world- not merely as a result of American influence but because of the general expansion of the Western moral tradition-makes at least verbal acknowledgement of the norm. Bribes are universal today. The bribe and its origins depends on the religious teaching.

Solutions to tort law

Capping damages: Congress is expected to pass legislation to cap the amount of damages that can awarded. Tort reform: The two purposes served under the present system- compensating the injured persons and punishing those at fault- eventually will be served by two different systems. The compensation of injured people will be included under a much broader system that will compensate or cure injured persons, regardless of the cause of the injury. The punishment purpose, will be handled under the criminal justice system. There would be standards of performance required for the various professions; those who failed to adhere to those standards would be punished by their profession- or under criminal law. The same would apply to manufactured products. Standards would be established and tests would be required. Manufacturers failing to follow the standards, thereby causing injury, would be punished under criminal law.

Corporate Ethics in the Era of Millenials

Corporate social responsibility has been added to the growing list of demands that investors, customers and employees present to companies. In 2015, 81 percent of Fortune 500 companies published sustainability reports, up from 20 percent in 2011, according to a report released by the Governance & Accountability Institute in June. Companies are publicizing their ethical standards and responsibility efforts, and consumers are punishing companies that appear to fall short. Even as headlines proclaim "greed is back," companies are investing time and resources into instituting more ethical practices. Why is there such dissonance? As is so often the case these days, businesses are taking cues from millennials. This generation (currently 18-35 years old) represents more than a quarter of the U.S. workforce — and this amount is expected to grow to over 50 percent by 2020. They will account for a third of retail sales in the same year. Businesses not thinking about how to interact with this generation are in serious trouble. So how do millennials think about corporate social responsibility — or CSR? A 2014 Nielsen survey showed that millennials are significantly more responsive to CSR in both consumption as well as employment decisions. Of those surveyed who would pay a premium for sustainable products, verify packaging and choose a company with a higher CSR reputation as employer, about half were millennials. These millennials are choosing to spend their resources — be it time or money — on organizations that appear to represent a set of values. With their significant buying power, millennials are placing huge demands on companies to respond with genuine CSR strategies. Where can companies start in building out this strategy? As millennials look for companies that focus on a triple bottom line (people, planet, profit), companies are looking to millennials for guidance. CSR actions should align with a company's values, brand proposition and business model but, at the same time, the company must listen and respond to its constituents. A key element for any successful CSR strategy is corporate communication. In the early days of CSR, corporations relied heavily on traditional media, delivering their message through advertising. Many did not institutionalize CSR as a separate business activity, relying on the marketing and public relations functions instead. Millennials, however, are far less responsive to press and TV ads and must be engaged differently. In scientific terms, their "BS meters" are very finely tuned. As so-called digital natives, this generation looks to social media to both consume and influence information and opinions. Peers are a trusted source; the official company flack is not.

The next civil war rights battle will be over the mind

Do we have a right to "mental privacy?" If the skull is not an absolute domain of privacy, there are no privacy domains left. Paul Root argues that the big personal liberty issues of the twenty-first century will all be in our heads- the "civil rights of the mind" he calls it. It's true that most of this technology is still gestational. But the early experiments are compelling: Some researchers say that fMRI brain scans can detect surprisingly specific mental acts- like whether you're entertaining racist thoughts, doing arithmetic, reading, or recognizing something. Entrepreneurs are already pushing dubious forms of the tech into the marketplace: You can now hire a firm, no lie MRI, to conduct a "truth verification" if you're trying to prove you're on the level. Give it 10 years, ethicists say, and brain tools will be used regularly- sometimes responsibly, often shoddily. Both situations scare civil libertarians. What happens when the government starts using brain scans in criminal investigations-to figure out if, say, a suspect is lying about a terrorist plot? Will the fifth amendment protect you from self-incrimination by your own brain? But this isn't just about reading minds; it's also about bombarding them with messages or tweaking their chemistry. Transcranial magnetic stimulation- now used to treat epilepsy- has shown that it can artificially generate states of empathy and euphoria. And you've probably heard of propranolol, a drug that can help erase traumatic memories. Let's say you've been assaulted and want to take propranolol to delete the memory. The state needs that memory to prosecute the assailant. Privacy rights vary from state to state, and it's unclear or even if the protections would apply to mental sanctity.

Cultural Imperialism

Domination of one culture over another by a deliberate policy that encourages cultural assimilation of neighboring foreign peoples or by economic or technological superiority. One culture can dominate others by its commerce; by its superior products and technologies which create a demand; by its cultural achievements whether they are scientific, literary, artistic, intellectual or social; and negatively, by intimidation of size and nearness, and by forced political and military agreements. When cultural dominance is perpetuated without sensitivity to, and respect for, indigenous ways of life, it is imperialistic and expansionist, feeding on its own success. Where a population is susceptible it may experience cultural invasion from more than one source. For example, it may adopt as an additional language one that is foreign; it may follow consumer patterns from another model; and it may accept ideologies from still a third source. Populations may become culturally dependent on foreign importations, stifling their own development in literature, science, education, mass media, behaviour and language, and in economic growth.

Aldo Leopold - father of green movement in America and the author of "The Land Ethic" - call for a moral responsibility to the natural world (p. 386)

Ethics direct all members of a community to treat one another with respect for the mutual benefit of all. A land ethic expands the definition of "community" to include not only humans, but all of the other parts of the Earth, as well: soils, waters, plants, and animals, or what Leopold called "the land." aldo-leopold-inspecting-pineIn Leopold's vision of a land ethic, the relationships between people and land are intertwined: care for people cannot be separated from care for the land. A land ethic is a moral code of conduct that grows out of these interconnected caring relationships. Leopold did not define the land ethic with a litany of rights and wrongs in A Sand County Almanac. Instead, he presented it as a set of values that naturally grew out of his lifetime of experiences in the outdoors. Leopold wrote that "we can only be ethical in relation to something we can see, understand, feel, love, or otherwise have faith in." He believed that direct contact with the natural world was crucial in shaping our ability to extend our ethics beyond our own self-interest. He hoped his essays would inspire others to embark or continue on a similar lifelong journey of outdoor exploration, developing an ethic of care that would grow out of their own close personal connection to nature. Leopold recognized that his dream of a widely accepted and implemented set of values based on caring - for people, for land, and for all the connections between them - would have to "evolve... in the minds of a thinking community." We are all part of the thinking community that needs to shape a land ethic for the 21st century and beyond. To do that, we must engage in thoughtful dialogue with each other, inviting a diversity of perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds. Together, we can form a land ethic that can be passed down to future generations.

Robots as teammates

Human teams are so effective that there is a natural tendency to enlist non-humans as teammates. What happens when nonhuman animals are brought into human teams? While there is an expectation that human teams are so powerful and effective that they should be able to gracefully incorporate at least one or two animal others, the results are have generally been poor, even when the proposed teammates are social animals such as dogs. No matter how much the dog trains with the team as a whole, it has proven to be much more effective to provide the dog with a single "handler" who is part of the team: the dog is an adjunct to the handler rather than a team member in its own right. Before the advent of robots, there was a general understanding that technologies could not be teammates. Noninformation technologies have long been understood as at most facilitators of teams. Although people may appreciate the capabilities of computers, few see them as having the potential to function as teammates. In essence, computers do not seem to have the right required communication and coordination abilities. Although animals and technologies have not even been pretenders for team membership, the team has been designated the normative organizational model for human-robot interaction. The 2007 International Conference of Human-Robot Interaction was themed "Robot as Team Member." In the official program, the co-chairs note that robots must coordinate their behaviors with human team members; they are more than mere tools but rather quasi-team members whose tasks have been integrated with those of humans. Unlike animals, robots can be designed specifically to support human activities. Robots can be programmed to focus unwaveringly on the team's goal. Researchers continue to make significant strides in training robots to engage in socially-appropriate behavior and coordinated action. There is also evidence that robots and especially androids elicit a broad range of social responses to a greater extent than computers and other technologies. Given how humanlike robots can appear, the answer to the question , "can and should we try to design robot teammates?" has been "yes", and the field has moved on to the question, "how do we make robots better teammates?".

Buying Employee Loyalty (i.e., stock options, etc.) (p. 324)

I just read a study that gives one reason why some people don't blow the whistle when they see a company doing something wrong. Researchers looked at a sample of 663 businesses that were brought to the U.S. federal court by shareholders for misreporting financial information. They found, "option grants by these misreporting firms varied over time. Specifically, misreporting firms granted 14% more stock options to rank-and-file employee when they were allegedly misreporting their financials, but the number of options they granted decreased by 32% after they appeared to stop misreporting." In other words, one way to stop potential whistleblowers is to pay them off.

Inquities

In 1979, Mustapha Masmoudi's seminal paper, "The New World Information Order" drew attention to the growing inequities and imbalances across the world in terms of information access, control, dissemination, and content construction. In it, he cites seven prominent forms of inequities existing in the world in terms of information. 1. A flagrant quantitative imbalance between North and South. 2. An inequality in information resources. 3&4. A de facto hegemony and a will to dominate. 5. A lack of information on developing countries. 6. Survival of the colonial era. An alienating influence in the economic, social, and cultural spheres. 7. Messages ill-suited to the areas in which they are disseminated. Nearly twenty years after Masmoudi, Smith, and Morehouse questioned the ethics of the Information Age and its supposed free flow of information and related commodities, the inequities in information transfer across the globe have changed very little. The unjust state of intellectual resource allocation Beverly affects contemporary scientists. If knowledge is power, the creation and dissemination of knowledge contribute to power. Thus, in relation to the science-based problem solving capacity to which Morehouse referred, Gibbs reviews the poor showing of third world researcher in the Science Citation index. Third world scientists denied the possibility to contribute suggests that their information is less valuable, or less esteemed to the western eye. Less developed countries are held at a distance in terms of research and development, forcing continuous cycles of dependence. Gibbs also considers telephone access, and notably, Haywood suggests that "one approach to measuring the impact of the "Information economy" as it evolves is the rate at which a country gains access to telephone lines." Overall, while North to South information inequities may exist, internal inequities exist as well. In many ways, these inequities parallel the disparity between suburban, urban, and rural regions within the United States.

What is the concept of sponsored lives? (p. 265, third full paragraph)

In short, we're living the sponsored life. From Huggies to Maalox, the necessities and little luxuries of an American's passage through this world are provided and promoted by one advertiser or another. The sponsored life is born when commercial culture sells our own experiences back to us. It grows as those experiences are then reconstituted inside us, mixing the most intimate processes of individual thought with commercial values, rhythms, and expectations. It has often been said by television's critics that TV doesn't deliver products to viewers but that viewers themselves are the real product, one that TV delivers to its advertisers. True, but the symbiotic relationship between advertising and audience goes deeper than that. The viewer who lives the sponsored life — and this is most of us to one degree or the other — is slowly re-created in the ad's image.

Concept of a Safety Tax

It is one of the most ubiquitous taxes we pay, now levied on virtually everything we buy, sell, and use. The tax accounts for 30 percent of the price of a stepladder and over 95% of the price of childhood vaccines. It is responsible for one-quarter of the price of a ride on a Long Island tour bus and one third of the price of a ride on a small airplane. It will soon cost large municipalities as much as they spend on fire or sanitation services. Some call it a safety tax, but its exact relationship to safety is mysterious. It is paid on many items that are risky to use, like ski lifts and hedge trimmers, but it weighs even more heavily on other items whose whole purpose is to make life safer. The tax falls especially hard on prescriptions drugs, doctors, surgeons, and all things medical. The tax goes by the name of tort liability. It is collected and disbursed through litigation. The courts alone decide just who will pay, how much, and on what timetable. Unlike better-known taxes, this one was never put to a legislature or a public referendum, debated at any length in the usual public arenas, or approved by the president or by any state governor. And although the tax ostensibly is collected for the public benefit, lawyers and other middlemen pocket more than half the take. Tort law, it is widely and passionately believed, is a public-spirited undertaking designed for the protection of the ordinary consumer and worker, the hapless accident victim, the "little guy."

Chapter 6 Introduction

It's hard to talk about contemporary business without talking at the same time about technology. With the rise of new technologies comes new ethical issues. People buy cars and houses online without ever seeing them. They exchange funds and make contracts over the internet without anything so tangible as paper currency, much less gold coin, ever changing hands. They make promises and offers by email that may go out to hundreds of thousands of consumers. What were introduced as dramatic aids to efficiency and productivity have, ironically, seemingly increased the time that most of us spend in our jobs. Mobile phones make us accessible to our bosses and supervisors 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Laptops computers and wireless connections mean we can work on projects anywhere. Email, even forgetting about the time it takes most of us to delete the spam we receive, seems to increase the demands on our time, rather than decrease it. Overall, with the dramatic improvements in communication technology, we spend more time on the job; have less time to ourselves; have less privacy; and, in many cases, get no more done when we walked from office to office, working, talking, and negotiating with people face to face. Technology also raises new and novel legal and ethical problems. The law can't keep up with the new technologies. And just as compliance is difficult when the rules no longer apply, ethics is difficult when there are few precedents and no clear traditions or customs to guide us. Or consider the new privacy issues that have come with the new technology. It used to be, if you didn't want anyone to know what you have written, you could burn the paper. Now, everyone knows that erasing an email doesn't make it disappear, should your computer be seized and searched by experts. Private correspondence is vulnerable to hackers of all stripes. Ultimately, technology may serve us, not the other way around. We are in danger of destroying the world through a slavish dedication to "technology for its own sakes".

Punitive damage awards

Multiples of the actual damages found; designed to deter and punish persons or firms found to be at fault. Punitive damages are awarded in addition to actual damages in certain circumstances. Punitive damages are considered punishment and are typically awarded at the court's discretion when the defendant's behavior is found to be especially harmful. Punitive damages are the payment that a defendant found guilty of committing a wrong or offense is ordered to pay on top of compensatory damages. They are awarded when compensatory damages—the money given to the injured party—are deemed to be insufficient. Punitive damages go beyond compensating the aggrieved party. They are specifically designed to punish defendants whose conduct is considered grossly negligent or intentional. Punitive damages are also referred to as exemplary damages as they are intended to set an example to deter others from committing similar acts.

Whistleblowing v. Leaking (p. 318-319)

Nature of whistle-blowingDissent: disagreement with authorityCast light on negligence, abuse, alert public toa risk and assign responsibility for that. Breach of loyaltyBlows whistle on his own teamPublic interest or loyalty to colleagues andhierarchyAccusationSingles out the responsible body who did notchoose to do rightPresent or imminent threat, specifity. When is whistle-blowing appropriate?Publicity-hungry, eager for scandal,personal biases and shortcomingsThe leakConsidered whistle blowing if concernsmisconductTool for news management byadministratorsEmpowering toolPress and tv reporters, manipulate publicopinion. Both leaking and whistle blowingChallenge systems of secrecy ingovernments, businesses, sciences, etc.Convey warningsWhen are they inappropriate?Used in malice or in errorBare private matters like sexual life. While citizens are entitled to their opinions, the law is clear - if you take classified information and share it with the press, publish it online, or do anything that puts sensitive information in the hands of those unauthorized to see it - you're not whistleblowing, you're leaking. When it comes to whistleblower cases, it's important to remember that, just as there are official protections for whistleblowers under the law, there are also procedures for properly reporting information. Revealing classified or sensitive information to anyone without a clearance or the authorization to receive it is not whistleblowing—it's leaking. Even if your leak is supposedly for the greater good, anytime you're sharing information with the media, or someone who doesn't have a security clearance, you're not whistleblowing - you're leaking.Security clearance holders who value both integrity and national security should take special care to make sure they're on the right side of the law. Whistleblower protections do exist, but a whistleblower will not be protected if they violated the law and policy in their attempt to report something they didn't feel was right. There are criminal penalties for sharing classified information. You haven't just broken the trust of your government employer when you leak information, you've broken the law. Fines and jail time are typical for those caught sending Uncle Sam's secrets to outside sources. And while the penalties may seem harsh or lenient depending upon your opinion of why the information was shared, the fact remains - your career and life will never be the same. If you have an issue with your supervisor, the nature of your work, or the mission at hand, there are proper channels for reporting information. Make sure you're following the law, to keep your career and yourself safe.

Insurance

Protection against possible financial loss. Tort insurance is a broad system of auto insurance that allows drivers to recover damages from other parties at fault in an accident. A tort system puts a greater emphasis on liability insurance to cover injuries a driver might cause but does not require drivers to insure themselves. In tort law cases, liability insurance is vital for the accused to protect their assets. Those that are found guilty without the benefit of liability insurance, often find that it takes a lifetime to pay off any judgments made against them. In fact, the courts can garnish wages and take money from bank accounts, when the accused do not meet their payments. Liability insurance is however, fairly common. Most drivers are required to carry liability insurance in case some one is injured in an accident; including the driver, any occupants, or those driving in another car in which they are involved in an accident with. Liability insurance offers protection against tort law cases, including legal representation in such cases. Malpractice insurance is a specific type of liability insurance which is utilized by those that are employed in the medical field. Regardless of the specific type of liability insurance, the purpose remains the same. Should an individual, or business, commit some act which causes harm to another, by accident or willfully, liability insurance protects them if there is a judgement made against them.

Lanham Act

The Lanham Act (also known as the Trademark Act of 1946) is the federal statute that governs trademarks, service marks, and unfair competition. It was passed by Congress on July 5, 1946, and signed into law by President Harry Truman. The Act took effect on July 5, 1947. A trademark is a word, phrase, logo, graphic symbol, or other device that identifies the source of a product or service and distinguishes it from competitors. Some examples of trademarks are Ford (cars and trucks), Betty Crocker (food products), and Microsoft (software). A service mark is the same as a trademark, except that it promotes a service, such as FedEx (delivery services). The Lanham Act sets out procedures for federally registering trademarks, states when owners of trademarks may be entitled to federal judicial protection against infringement, and establishes other guidelines and remedies for trademark owners. The Act provides for a national system of trademark registration and protects the owner of a federally registered mark against the use of similar marks if such use is likely to result in consumer confusion, or if the dilution of a famous mark is likely to occur.

Chapter 7 Introduction

The chapter starts with a commercial for a super unhealthy brand appearing very appealing and alluring. The child watching it wants to get something from the brand because of the toy shown in the ad. This strikes a way of thinking within the parent. What is the justification for making such unhealthy appeals to young children? And this comes at a time when most parents are not there, as you are now, to monitor and discuss the true desirability of these artificially created desires. Indeed, what is the difference between appealing to kids' actual needs and wants and creating artificial desires that are opposite of their actual needs and wants? And shouldn't there be some restrictions on advertising to the young and vulnerable? The last question you answer right away. Restrictions on advertising violate the right to free speech. But what if the advertisement is unhealthy? What if, in the case of cigarettes and other tobacco products, it it downright deadly? It is all seduction. But is seduction always wrong? There are lies, but then there are white lies and partial truths and spin, which has some basis in truth but is powerfully prejudiced toward a certain bias. Where does advertising fit in? What makes it legitimate? What would make it illegitimate? Is it allowable to tell a lie to sell something? At this point, we may want to go back to our honesty chapter, but most of us would argue that honesty, full disclosure, may be too high for most advertising and marketing. No one expects a salesperson to tell you the flaws in the product or the advantages of the competitor's version. And advertising and marketing, which are by their very nature biased, play a critical role in the free market system. People have to know about a product to have interest in buying it. Merely proving the information to the customer is rarely enough. In a world filled with ads and products, much more dramatic methods are called for. But once we get beyond the honest presentation of information, the ethical questions get difficult.

Information Commoditization

The commoditization of information brings potentially unnecessary or undesirable forms of information to a region or country. The increasing commoditization of information is removing information from public sectors or public agencies to the private realm. If we are of the belief that information wants to be free and should be free, an age old adage of librarianship, this intense commoditization of information comprises a most significant issue facing information professionals today. As wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands through monopolization and centralization, information professionals must more actively seek alternative outlets of information. Uniformity and monotony dominate, as we see American and western privatization strangle choice and options. While we have hundreds of channels, millions of internet sites, and a plethora of media outlets, we still suffer from a paucity of choice. On the global level, fewer countries, fewer cultures have a chance to promote their own forms of indigenous knowledge, and they are increasingly forced to accept irrelevant, futile, and ineffective information. Furthermore, the continual neglect of developing nations as potential information suppliers smacks of imperialism and colonialism, while it continues to deny any economic power or autonomy to the developing nations. The myth of the information ages strikes again-providing computers to the average citizens of the third world is insufficient at best. The information society is grounded in commoditization and profit for some, while simultaneously, for many, social necessities and resources are in danger.

Information Ethics in a Worldwide Context

The information society (now understood as a global society) or Information Age possesses a number of characteristics or qualities, among them a growing reliance on computer technologies, a large knowledge sector work force, a growing division of labor- a division which has major international implications, a movement from an analog to a digital model of informational and commercial transfer, and the consideration of information as a major commodity, analogous to the physical goods of the Industrial Age. And, nearly two decades ago, Smith recognized the global significance of information as a major commodity and defining feature of this age. Smith then declared that information lay at the heart of the world economy and cannot be separated from the other conflicts of which international policies are composed. Thus, the information society is considered an international phenomenon, with potential benefits and detriments to the world as a whole. New ethical dilemmas range from the fair and equitable distribution of resources to the availability and provision of education and training, to a mutual respect and consideration of cultural specificity and values. For instance, while the Information Age has encouraged a major increase in the amount of information produced, in the number of available channels through which information is accessible, and the apparent ease with which information is readily available, a growing disparity continues to set apart the now all-too-familiar "haves" and "have-nots." While the information society offers an abundance of goods to some peoples, it is contributing to an expansive "digital divide" keeping people and nations on unequal planes. This inequality is promulgated on a number of levels.

Conflict between efficiency and safety (p. 389) - litigation over benzene under OSHA standards. American Petroleum Institute v. Marshall, 5th Circuit Decision)

The labor unions won an important political victory when Congress passed the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. That act, among other things, severely restricts worker exposure to toxic substances. It instructs the Secretary of Labor to "set the standard which most adequately assures, to the extent feasible, that no employee will suffer material impairment of health or functional capacity even if such employee has regular exposure to the hazard for the period of his working life. Pursuant to this law, the Secretary of Labor in 1977 reduced from ten to one part per million the permissible ambient exposure level for benzene, a carcinogen for which no safe threshold is known. The American Petroleum Institute challenged the new standard in court. It argued, which much evidence in its favor, that the benefits of the one ppm standard did not equal the costs to the industry. The standard therefore did not appear to be a rational response to a market failure in that it did not strike an efficient balance between the interest of workers in safety and the interests of industry and consumers in keeping prices down. The secretary of labor defended the tough safety standard on the ground that the law demanded it. An efficient standard might have required safety until it cost industry more to prevent a risk than it cost workers to accept it. Had Congress adopted this vision of public policy, it would have treated workers not as ends-in themselves, but as means for the production of overall utility. This, as the Secretary saw it, was what Congress refused to do. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed with the American Petroleum Institute and invalidated the one ppm benzene standard. On July 2, 1980, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision in American Petroleum Institute vs Marshall and remanded the benzene standard back to OSHA for revision. The narrowly based Supreme Court decision was divided over the role economic considerations should play in judicial review.

Introduction - Shareholder v. Stakeholder concepts (know Milton Friedman's philosophy and some of the rebuttals)(p. 172-174)

The shareholder approach believes that those in management have a singular duty to please shareholder. The stakeholder approach believes that management should consider everyone who is affected. Friedman's position has been attacked by many critics on the grounds that corporate boards should consider other stakeholders in their decisions. Yet, if the owner of a privately held firm is under no obligation to care about anybody's interest but her own, why should it be different for a publicly traded company? While agreeing with Friedman's premise that managers should care only about shareholders' interests, Nobel Laureate Oliver Hart of Harvard and Chicago Booth's Luigi Zingales reject the view that shareholders care only about money. A company's ultimate shareholders are ordinary people who, in addition to caring about money, are also concerned about a myriad of ethical and social issues: they purchase electric cars to lower their carbon footprint; they buy free-range chicken or fair-trade coffee because they view this as the ethical—albeit more expensive—choice. They are, in other words, prosocial in their day-to-day life—at least to some extent. "If consumers and owners of private companies take social factors into account and internalize externalities in their own behavior, why would they not want the public companies they invest in to do the same?" Hart and Zingales ask. Friedman recognized that in some cases shareholders may have different objectives, but he concluded these objectives are better pursued by the shareholders on their own. This is certainly the case for Friedman's leading example: corporate charity. Ignoring tax considerations, according to Friedman, it is preferable that the money spent in corporate philanthropy be paid out to shareholders in the form of dividends and then allocated by them to charity, rather than allocated by corporate managers directly. Hart and Zingales argue that this conclusion holds only under the assumption that shareholders can individually reproduce or undo any corporate decision, without incurring any additional cost. This assumption holds for charity: a dollar in charity is the same whether it is donated by an individual or by a corporation. But it does not hold for most other social objectives: an individual cannot generally undo corporate pollution at the same cost that a company would have paid to avoid it. In this more general case, Hart and Zingales conclude that a company's objective should be the maximization of shareholders' welfare, not value.

Plato - Misanthropy concept (p. 254)

There is one danger that we must guard against, Socrates said. What sort of danger? I asked. Of becoming misologic (hating logic) he said, in the sense that people became misanthropic. No greater misfortune could happen to anyone than that of developing a dislike for argument. Misology and misanthropy arise in just the same way. Misanthropy is induced by believing in somebody quite uncritically. You assume that a person is absolutely truthful and sincere and reliable, and a little later you find that he is shoddy and unreliable. Then the same thing happens again. After repeated disappointments at the hands of the very people who might be supposed to be your nearest and most intimate friends, constant irritation ends by making you dislike everybody and suppose that there is no sincerity to be found anywhere. The resemblance between arguments and human beings lies in this: that when one believes that an argument is true without reference to the art of logic, and then a little later decides rightly or wrongly that it is false, and the same thing happens again and again, they end by believing that they are wiser than anyone else, because they alone have discovered that there is nothing stable or dependable either in facts or in arguments, and that everything fluctuates just like the water in a tidal channel, and never stays at any point for any time. But suppose there is an argument which is true and valid but someone spent his life loathing arguments and so missed the chance of knowing the truth about reality-would that not be a deplorable thing?

Chapter 8 Introduction

There's a strike at your company and now managers are responsible for taking care of responsibilities normally done by striking employees. You're in charge of the complaint department and a guy comes in with an item that he out together wrong and now it's messed up. The guy threatens to sue. You remember however that your manager told you to handle all cases as best as you can and has given you a free hand to give refunds or replace products at your discretion. But there is no advice or policy about what to do when a customer abuses a product through stupidity or incompetence. In your view, should the company honor the complaints of this customer? Or should you (politely) tell him what he should do? Businesses are responsible for what happens because of their operations and products. The extent and nature of that responsibility depends on the product, the situation, the extent of the damage caused, the character of the company, the consumer, and the community. If something bad happens because an already-hated company or industry does something wrong, the reaction will be much more ferocious than when a well-loved local business makes a mistake. An important question is to what extent the consumer is a fully responsible agent. Sometimes the harm is not from the product but from the production process. Sometimes the potential harm of a product or a line of products is just not known. Complicating the basic. observation that most people consider companies responsible for their products and services are a number of issues that are both basic to human psychology and emergent in the new world of tort law and strict liability. On the human psychology side, there is the fact that when something goes wrong, people want to blame someone. On the side of tort law, there has been a ballooning-especially in America-of product liability and malpractice cases and verdicts. Some of these verdicts have been well publicized and understandably strike fear in the hearts of anyone who tries to supply products or services to the public. Further complicating the emerging portrait of the tort system is the concept of strict liability. Most people accept the idea that when someone does something wrong or causes harm that could or should have been avoided, he or she should be held responsible. But strict liability bypasses that common-sense practice and holds companies responsible-at least financially responsible-even in the absence of any argument that they could have or should have avoided the harm in question. Thus, it has become common practice for plaintiffs to sue not only those who are immediately responsible for a harm, but also those who are simply in the chain of causation. It is, in part, because of this practice, but also the enormous size of some of the recent awards, that tort law has been declared a kind of crisis by many in the business community.

SOPA and the Protect IP Act

Would create a national firewall by censoring the domain names of websites accused of hosting infringing copyright materials. This legislation would enable law enforcement to take down the entire Tumblr.com domain due to something posted on a single blog. Yes, an entire, largely innocent online platform could be punished for the actions of a tiny minority. SOPA would go even further, creating a system of private regulation to shut down websites that are accused of not doing enough to prevent infringement. Keep in mind that these shutdowns would happen before a site owner could depend himself in court- SOPA could punish sites without even establishing whether they are guilty of the charges brought against them. Legislation like SOPA and Protect IP would instigate a data obfuscation arms race, making legitimate law enforcement efforts all the more difficult. SOPA and the Protect IP Act are fundamentally incompatible with a free society and with the founding principles of the United States. This truth should be self-evident: Human rights should never be subjugated to copyright.

homogeneity and global villages

What is Globalization? Human societies across the globe have established progressively closer contacts over many centuries, but recently the pace has dramatically increased Many feel that means uprooting old ways of life and threatening livelihoods and cultures. What causes Globalization? Multinational companies that sell around the world. Economic unification of the globe: Trade, manufacture, migrant workers, etc. bring together distant locations. Cultural products: Such as tv shows and movies disseminate social values and norms when they are consumed in places far from where they are made. Is it true that when culture is globalized, everyone becomes the same? To some degree, yes: Access to medical care and education is spread everywhere. (We now have similar connections) Other sense: Is it true that when culture is globalized, everyone becomes the same? No: globalization actually breaks up sameness. In remote communities, everyone dresses and acts the same. When they are exposed to new influences from the outside, there is more difference introduced within communities. More languages, more kinds of dress, different values. (People in villages act the same, globalization helps them become different) Appiah Cosmopolitan - citizens of the world, everyone in the world didn't know who they were, but were connected. Expectation of being different, ok to be different. Attitude is they are different and I'm interested. (sharing culture). Difference in the era of globalization - Are all these pockets of homogeneity less distinctive than they were a century ago? Yes, -Have clean drinking water -Have schools -Have medicines For those that do not have these things, they are inventing new forms of: -Slang -Hair styles -Religions Should we attempt to preserve "cultures"? -Traditional, homogenous cultures often do not make sense economically. -Agriculture is no longer organized the same way, and there are more jobs in cities. Diversity and Personal Choice What is important, Appiah claims, is that people can choose how to lead their lives. "Cosmopolitans think human variety matters because people are entitled to the options they need to shape their lives in partnership with others."

Moral Muteness vs. Moral Blindness (p. 315-317)

What is moral muteness? People are morally mute if they fail forthrightly to voice moral concern regarding issues about which they possess moral convictions. Hypocrites act deceptively, claiming moral convictions that they do not in fact hold. People who are morally mute are deceptive as well, but in a quite different way, because they fail to disclose and communicate overtly moral convictions that they in fact hold. Moral silence: Staying silent when you should not. Speak as if you do not hold convictions that they actually do. Hypocrisy: Voicing ethical convictions but knowingly acting opposite way. Speak as if you hold convictions but you don't. BOTH:Discrepancy between what is believed and what they say they believe. Moral silence is correlated and reinforced by the related practices of moral deafness and moral blindness. The morally deaf fail to take notice of moral issues and concerns raised by others. They are morally deaf when their failures to listen arise not from ill will but from a kind of inattention or obscured attention that leaves them unwilling to comprehend moral concerns and issues that call for their response. Moral blindness complements, complicates, and often occasions moral silence and deafness. To be morally blind is to fail to recognize moral issues and concerns. Many people argue quite forcefully that ethical concerns are irrelevant to business practices.

What ethical issues are presented by multi-national businesses? (p. 337)

You have just transferred to the international division of your company. Your new jobs requires you to work with company operations all over the world. Navigating various cultural customs can be tricky, but the most difficult problems you will face concern navigating different ethical norms of behavior. Sometimes it is not easy to distinguish between customs that you should follow to be polite and respectful and practices that are morally unacceptable, regardless of what appears to be common practice in the culture. As soon as you leave your home country, you find yourself grappling with variations on a major philosophical question: are ethical principles universal, or does every culture have its own ethics? There is a moral necessary and what is morally preferable. But there is also what is morally possible, and confusing them when you are in a position of power or influence can do a lot of harm.

Communications Decency Act (Section 230)

says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider" (47 U.S.C. § 230). In other words, online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do. The protected intermediaries include not only regular Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but also a range of "interactive computer service providers," including basically any online service that publishes third-party content. Though there are important exceptions for certain criminal and intellectual property-based claims, CDA 230 creates a broad protection that has allowed innovation and free speech online to flourish. This legal and policy framework has allowed for YouTube and Vimeo users to upload their own videos, Amazon and Yelp to offer countless user reviews, craigslist to host classified ads, and Facebook and Twitter to offer social networking to hundreds of millions of Internet users. Given the sheer size of user-generated websites (for example, Facebook alone has more than 1 billion users, and YouTube users upload 100 hours of video every minute), it would be infeasible for online intermediaries to prevent objectionable content from cropping up on their site. Rather than face potential liability for their users' actions, most would likely not host any user content at all or would need to protect themselves by being actively engaged in censoring what we say, what we see, and what we do online. In short, CDA 230 is perhaps the most influential law to protect the kind of innovation that has allowed the Internet to thrive since 1996.