chapter5

Which of the following best exemplifies the global tragedy of the commons?

a firm dumping its chemical wastes directly into an ocean

A righteous moralist is most likely to claim that

a multinational's home-country standards of ethics are the appropriate ones for companies to follow in foreign countries.

Businesses can make sure that they are hiring individuals with strong personal ethics by

asking for letters of reference from the prospective employees.

Shangrilah Sandals is a manufacturing firm in a developing country, where it routinely uses grease payments to local officials to expedite overseas shipments. It has decided to open a plant in the United States, and has determined that it would not offer any facilitating payments to U.S. officials. Shangrilah's behavior illustrates the straw man approach of

cultural relativism.

The straw man approach of righteous moralism is typically associated with managers from

developed nations.

In a business setting, managers sometimes do not realize they are behaving unethically, primarily because they

fail to take into account the ethical dimension of business decisions.

Which of the following applies to the theory of rights?

fundamental human rights and privileges transcend national boundaries and cultures.

The CEO of United Synergy Inc., a company in its embryonic stage, believes that unethical behavior will result in premature decline of the company. In order to ensure that the company starts operating in the most ethical manner, the CEO should

hire employees with strong personal ethics.

Due to certain strict environmental and employment standards in its home nation, Taurus Inc. has shifted its operations to developing nations. Hence, the firm has now been able to gain competitive advantage by avoiding costly pollution controls. This strategic move of Taurus Inc. will be considered

immoral.

An American manager of a multinational company who is working in one of the company's production plants located in the country of Cadmia employs child labor at the manufacturing unit he is in charge of. On being criticized as unethical, the manager argues that such actions are ethically defensible because everyone in Cadmia is doing it. Which of the following straw men approaches to ethics is most likely demonstrated by the manager?

naive immoralist

The term global commons refers to

natural resources from which everyone benefits but for which no one is specifically responsible.

Which of the following practices should be avoided by a company to ensure ethical decision making?

placing its economic interests before its moral principles

Jonathan is the manager of his company's facilities in the Philippines. He believes in ensuring the exact same standards of working conditions, wages, and labor management in the Philippines as practiced by the company's corporate office in its home country, the United States. His policy does not always lead to profits because of the vast cultural differences between the two nations. Which of the following straw men approaches to ethics is most likely being adopted by Jonathan?

righteous moralism

Silver Meteorite Inc. is a multinational company whose home country, Palumbia Republic, considers grease payments as both illegal and unethical. Hence, the company has a zero-tolerance approach toward grease payments irrespective of any of its host nations' perspectives toward such payments. In this context, Silver Meteorite Inc. is following the approach to ethics known as

righteous moralist.

Brain Wing Inc. has won the bid to build airplanes for a host country government. However, the execution of the contract has been delayed due to certain unproductive, bureaucratic procedures in the less developed nation. In order to legally overcome this problem, Brain Wing Inc. could resort to the payment of

speed money.

Which of the following occurs when a resource held jointly by all, but owned by no one, is overused by individuals, resulting in its degradation?

tragedy of the commons

Ten years after he proposed what came to be known as Sullivan's principles, Leon Sullivan concluded that following his principles

was not sufficient to ethically justify the existence of Western businesses in South Africa.

According to Rawls, which of the following principles would be unanimously accepted by people under the veil of ignorance?

Each person should be permitted the maximum amount of basic liberty that is compatible with a similar liberty for others.

Which of the following statements is true about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

According to this declaration, it is unethical to employ child labor in sweatshops even if that happens to be common in some countries.

Which of the following straw men approaches to business ethics is best summarized by the maxim "When in Rome, do as the Romans"?

Cultural relativism

Which of the following is a drawback of the utilitarian approach to business ethics?

It omits the consideration of justice.

Which of the following statements is true of the utilitarian approach to business ethics?

It recognizes that a business should pursue only those actions where the social benefits outweigh the costs.

Neon Synergy Inc. operates in three different countries, and is headed by a CEO who believes that the best approach to ethics is cultural relativism. In this context, which of the following statements is most likely to be true regarding Neon Synergy?

The business units of Neon Synergy will be empowered to adopt the standards of ethics followed in their respective host nations.

A multinational corporation that adopts the naive immoralist approach to ethics will most likely

believe that, in a host country, any action is ethically justified if everyone is doing it. Correct

Lugnow Inc. paid a sum of $76,000 to an official in the government of Nepotismia to ensure that the company obtained exclusive preferential treatment. The $76,000 can be classified as

bribe.