Position Paper #2 --  Ethics and Expediency in the Management of Hazards

Due: See schedule page

The basic assignment:
             Write a 3-5 page essay in which you explain and defend your own view of the relation between "good ethics" and "good business" in connection with the management of hazards.  (By "hazards" I mean anything that poses a risk of harm to one's customers, one's employees, one's neighbors, or to the environment.)

Some questions to consider:
(Note: Your paper need not answer all these questions.  But I hope you will think about them all.)

1.  Do business people actually have a moral responsibility to take care to reduce risks to customers' safety and health, and/or to avoid damage to the environment, even when doing so may reduce their company's profits?  Why or why not?

2. When does "safety pay"?  When doesn't it?  Are there really cases when more money can be made, even in the long run, by skimping on health and safety measures and letting one's customers, workers, or neighbors suffer the consequences?  In other words are 'good ethics' and 'good business' the same, or do they sometimes lead in different directions?

3.  Is the law a fully adequate guide to our responsibilities in this area?  Are there any reasons to think that sometimes it might be wrong to do something, even though it may be legal? 

4. 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 safety and environmental regulations, or with lobbying against new legislation that might impose costs on businesses in order to reduce hazards of one kind or another? 

5.  In the business world described in Moral Mazes "good ethics" would seem to be a considerable obstacle to getting ahead.  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 often 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 and Chapter 7, pp. 173-183)  Is this how it really is?  Is this how it has to be?

6.  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?)