Position Paper #2 -- Ethics and Expediency in the Management of Hazards Due: April 18
The basic assignment:
Write a 4-6 page essay in which you explain and defend your own view of how an ethical business person should handle 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.) Your paper should have a clear thesis and should argue for that thesis. (See the paper writing guides linked on the class website for detailed advice on how to do this.)
Some questions to consider:
Note: Your paper need not answer all these questions. In fact, it would be impossible to do a good job on them all in the space available. Choose a focus. (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? [Please note: if you answer this question by saying that business people ought to reduce risks because doing so will lead to greater profits in the long run, you are missing the point of the question. This question is about what one ought to do when there is a conflict between the goal of making money and the goal of preserving health, safety or the environment.]
2. But is there a conflict between these goals? Are there really cases when more money can be made, even in the long run, by skimping on health or safety or environmental measures and letting one's customers, workers, or neighbors suffer the consequences? If you are inclined to say that there never is a conflict, how would you account for the sorts of cases described in Moral Mazes, where, for example, the textile company was able to ignore the damage to its workers’ hearing. On the other hand, what about Ray Anderson’s “business case for sustainability” – as described in the video we saw in class? Does the success of his company prove that preserving the environment will boost the bottom line?
3. Given that perfection (perfect safety, zero environmental impact) is probably unattainable, how should we balance concerns about safety and environmental preservation against concerns about cost? Is cost benefit analysis the right framework for thinking about this? Is willingness to pay a good criterion of value?
4. What role should the concept of consent play in our answer to this question? Should we say, for example, that workers who accept a job have consented to the risks involved and that their employers are, therefore, not responsible for any resulting injuries or diseases? Does that consent need to be informed consent or could we say that employees should be responsible for finding out what they need to know about the hazards of their work? Can we apply this same logic to customers and product safety?
5. 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?
6. In the business world described in Moral Mazes strong ethical convictions about safety or the environment 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 managers profess deep concern for these issues, but privately they are contemptuous of those who care about them, and do their 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. 154-172 and Chapter 7, pp. 185-193) Is this how it really is? Is this how it has to be?