Business Ethics                                  Second Paper Assignment                Due: April 15

Ethics and Expediency in the Management of Hazards

            "Good ethics is good business" has become a popular slogan among corporate leaders, at least when they are speaking in public.  But in the business world described in Moral Mazes "good ethics" would seem to be a considerable burden.  Successful managers are 'flexible' and 'pragmatic' rather than principled. When managers object to corporate practices on the grounds that those practices are creating hazards to workers, consumers, or the environment, their colleagues and superiors regard them as 'nitpickers' who are 'not team players', and so on. (See Chapter 5) Objections to corporate practices coming from outside business -- from regulators, from environmentalists, from consumer activists, and so on -- are regarded as irrational and unrealistic attempts to undermine business and technology.  Publicly one professes deep concern for these issues, but privately one is contemptuous of those who care about them, and one does one's best to delay or water down regulations, to deny or cover up health problems, and to invest in safety improvements only when there is a reasonably quick improvement in productivity to be gained as well. (See Chapter 6, pp. 147-161)
In an article called "Business and Environmental Ethics", W. Michael Hoffman objects to the idea that "good ethics is good business" on the grounds that ethics sometimes requires sacrifice.  Sometimes ethics requires that we put other people's interests before our own.  If businesses pursue a vision of "ethics" that is based on the assumption that doing the right thing will always pay off, then their commitment to ethics will crumble when doing the right thing requires a sacrifice of the bottom line.  Good ethics, he argues, will cost us something.

            Your assignment is to write a 5-6 page essay in which you answer (at least some of) the following questions:

• Do businesses have a moral responsibility to reduce hazards to consumers, to their workers, and to the environment, even when doing so may reduce their profits?  Why or why not?
• When does "safety pay"?  When doesn't it?  Are there really (as Hoffman suggests) cases when more money will be made, even in the long run, by skimping on health and safety measures or on environmental protections and letting one's customers, workers, or neighbors (or, perhaps, future generations) suffer the consequences?
• Is the law a fully adequate guide to our responsibilities in these areas?  Are there any reasons to think that sometimes it might be wrong to do something, even though it may be legal? 
• What responsibilities might business people have in connection with efforts to change the law?  Is there anything wrong with trying to influence government to relax or remove regulations concerning advertising, product safety or the environment, or with lobbying against new legislation that might impose costs on businesses in an effort to reduce hazards of one kind or another?
• If, as Jackall argues, pushing hard for one's concerns about health, safety, or the environment is likely to retard one's progress up the corporate ladder, what might motivate someone to pay that price?  Is there any way to explain to 'expediency'-oriented managers what they are overlooking?  What might they be losing as they win corporate success?  Why should they care about this?  (Should they care?  Are 'good ethics' worth paying a price in money or success?)