Business Ethics

"Etiquette" designates a special realm of morality.

False

Ethical egoism says that human beings are, as a matter of fact, so constructed that they must behave selfishly.

False

In a broad sense morality is the moral code of an individual or of a society (insofar as the moral codes of the individuals making up that society overlap).

False

Business ethics is the study of what constitutes right and wrong, or good and bad, human conduct in a business context.

True

Bystander apathy appears to result in part from diffusion of responsibility.

True

Corporate internal decision (CID) structures amount to established procedures for accomplishing specific goals.

True

John Rawls's second principle of justice states that insofar as inequalities are permitted—that is, insofar as it is compatible with justice for some jobs or positions to bring greater rewards than others—these positions must be open to all.

True

Just cause requires that reasons for discipline or discharge related directly to job performance.

True

Labor historians generally consider the Knights of Labor (K of L), established in 1869, as the first truly national trade union.

True

Libertarians would find it immoral and unjust to coerce people to give food or money to the starving.

True

Nonconsequentialist theories of ethics consider the consequences of an action or rule when making a moral judgment.

True

The phrase "the declining marginal utility of money" means that successive additions to one's income produce, on average, less happiness or welfare than did earlier additions.

True

Three approaches have gained the most attention when it comes to achieving our environmental goals: the use of regulations, incentives, and pricing mechanisms.

True

Traditionally, the obligations between a business organization and its employees could be boiled down to "A fair wage for an honest day's work."

True

Choose the factual precept concerning wages:

a. a fair wage presupposes a fair work contract

The key moral ideal in promotions is

fairness

According to Jeremy Bentham, the question is not whether animals can feel pain, but whether they can talk and reason.

false

Inbreeding refers to longevity on a job or with a firm.

false

Regulation is always the most effective way to allocate the costs of environmental protection.

false

The rising affluence of people in the United States has meant a corresponding decrease in pollution and its attendant environmental problems in the United States.

false

Corporate culture can be both explicit and implicit

fr

A tangible truth about having moral principles is

if you do the right thing only because you think it will pay off, you are not really motivated by moral concerns.

In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick advocates

liberatarianism

A moral of Garrett Hardin's parable "The Tragedy of the Commons" is that there can be a difference between the private costs and the social costs of a business activity.

true

From the beginning, unions have been driven by an attempt to protect workers from abuses of power at the hands of employers.

true

One of the chief concerns of nepotism is the disregard of managerial responsibilities to the organization and of fairness to other employees.

true

Utilitarians reject the very idea of a natural right to property.

true

The narrow view of corporate social responsibility argues companies must make money within the "rules of the game," which rules out all of the following except for:

Harm

The veil of ignorance demands people in the original position to be

Impartial

Which of the following characteristics distinguishes moral standards from other sorts of standards?

Moral standards take priority over other standards, including self-interest.

A hypothetical imperative tells us to act as we would want everyone to act in that situation.

True

According to Melvin Anshen, the case for a broad view of corporate responsibility can be defended on the basis of there always being a kind of social contract existing between business and society.

True

According to Robert Nozick, property rights exist prior to any social arrangements and are morally antecedent to any legislative decisions that a society might make.

True

According to Robert Nozick, the basic moral rights possessed by all human beings are both negative and natural.

True

According to divine command theory, if something is wrong, then the only reason it is wrong is that God commands us not to do it.

True

According to libertarianism, liberty is the prime value, and justice consists in permitting each to live as he or she pleases, free from the interference of others.

True

According to the "maximin" rule, you should select the alternative under which the worst that could happen to you is better than the worst that could happen to you under any other alternative.

True

Advocates of a naturalistic ethic contend that some natural objects are morally considerable in their own right, apart from human interests.

True

An argument is a group of statements, one of which is claimed to follow from the others.

True

According to common law, to legally terminate an employee, an employer

a. can have any reason or no reason.

A basic tenet of capitalism is that

a. capitalism requires private ownership of the major means of production.

Business must be sensitive to its impacts on the physical environment primarily because of the

a. interdependence of an ecosystem's elements.

A common point of contention about corporations is

a. philosophers and business theorists disagree whether corporations are moral agents.

The "rules of the game" for corporate work are intended to

a. promote open and free competition.

According to the anthropocentric (or human-oriented) ethic of Baxter and others,

a. the Grand Canyon is valuable only because people care about it.

Utilitarians believe that

an action that leads to unhappiness is morally right if any other action that you could have performed instead would have brought about even more unhappiness.

Which of the following accurately reflects the concept of Marxism?

b. Labor is alienated in a capitalist economic system (in part) because the labor of a worker stands opposed to the worker as an autonomous power.

Which of the following contributed to the more relaxed incorporation procedures of modern times?

b. The idea that incorporation is a by-product of the people's right to associate, not a gift from the state.

Fair personnel policies and decisions must be based on criteria that are clear, job related, and

b. equally applied.

Cost benefit analysis

b. involves value judgments and factual uncertainties.

Some environmental regulations (like forbidding the burning of coal in cities) benefit each and every one of us because the air we all breathe is cleaner. If a company ignores the regulation and burns coal, while others obey the regulation, then the company

b. is being a free-rider.

Of the four types of discharge, firing

b. is for-cause dismissal—the result of employee theft, gross insubordination, release of proprietary information, and so on.

Which of the following is a drawback to the regulatory approach?

b. regulation can take away an industry's incentive to do more than the minimum

The statement that best defines rights is

c. a right is an entitlement to act or to have others act in a certain way.

A practical basis for discussing moral issues involves taking account of

c. effects, ideals, and obligations.

According to Mill's utilitarianism

c. rights are certain moral rules, the observance of which is of the utmost importance for the long-run, overall maximization of happiness.

Aristotle's formal principle of justice states,

c. similar cases must be treated alike except where there is some relevant difference.

The "tragedy of the commons" is

c. that individual pursuit of self-interest can sometimes make everyone worse off.

Though many jobs are outsourced, most economists believe

c. the economy will create new jobs.

Which of the following is a correct statement about union activities?

d. A sympathetic strike occurs when workers who have no particular grievance of their own and who may or may not have the same employer decide to strike in support of others.

Which statement is true about the hiring and employment process?

d. According to common law, unless there is an explicit contractual provision to the contrary, every employment is employment "at will."

Which of the following is true of a regulatory approach to environmental problems?

d. It requires the EPA or other body to determine the most effective, feasible pollution-control technology for each different industry.

Business has considered the environment to be

d. free and nearly limitless.

One reason for believing that in practice capitalism fails to live up to its own ideal of competition is

d. government subsidies and protective tariffs.

According to David Ewing, two factors explain the absence of civil liberties and the prevalence of authoritarianism in the workplace. Which of the following is one of them?

d. the rise of personnel engineering and professional management

The famous experiments by social psychologist Solomon Asch show

even temporary groups can pressure people to conform.

According to John Rawls, people in "the original position" choose the principles of justice solely on the basis of

self interest

Consequentialism

states that the moral rightness of an action is determined solely by its results.

According to W. D. Ross's theory

we have various moral duties that cannot be reduced to a single, overarching obligation.

Ethical relativism supports the theory that:

what is right is determined by what a culture or society says is right