IMPORT/EXPORT SUPPLIERS

IMPORT/EXPORT SUPPLIERS

You are a manager for Import/Export Suppliers, LLC and your direct supervisor has asked for a face-to-face meeting with you following the most recent board of directors meeting.  This is not unusual as your supervisor usually meets with you following these meetings to discuss changes, evaluate your division’s production, and to examine your area firsthand.

This meeting seemed to begin a little different as your supervisor requested that you not take notes but just listen.  The first agenda item was a recent legal case arising from a situation that occurred within your division in which an employee was injured.  Your supervisor asks if you have reviewed all emails associated with the accident for corporate exposure as you were instructed to do after the last meeting.  Of course, you respond that you have and that nothing in your judgement would expose the corporation to any liability.  Regardless of your assessment, your supervisor tells you that corporate counsel has instructed that you delete all emails from your server relating to the event.  You should also delete some others around the same timeframe.  You should make a note that you were following your understanding of the company policy to periodically purge the email system.  In the back of your mind, you know that it is illegal to delete emails that could be part of a lawsuit, but counsel has given you a “policy” to make it look legal.

The second topic involves your use of illegal immigrants.  Your supervisor hands you a memorandum dictating that company policy was not to employ anyone who was in the country illegally.  After handing you the document, your supervisor also handed you a check for $5,000.00.  The check indicated that the reason for the bonus was your “exemplary safety record,” but your supervisor verbally tells you that the real reason was the amount of money you had saved the company by using illegal workers.  You began this practice to support the city in which you are located in that they publicly announced they would not cooperate in the federal government’s enforcement of immigration laws.  It built some good will locally and has now made you some extra money, but violates federal law and company “policy.”

The last agenda item for today revolves around a fertilization chemical that is being used by your division.  Reports done by the company say that the chemical is not harmful to humans and even if it was, it is not being released into any area that it might contact the community.  While you would like to believe this, you have witnessed first-hand that when it rains, the chemical washes into a creek that leads to the river that supplies the nearest city’s drinking water.  This disturbs you, but the report does take this into account and says that it is so diluted by the rain, creek water and the river that it really doesn’t exist by the time it is drank.  Your supervisor just wants to make you aware that the company is going to stop using this chemical within the next five years and use a natural substance instead.  That being said, it will be necessary to use up all the remaining product, so you will need to increase your use of it by 100% for the next three years.

Given this information, your textbook and your instructor’s powerpoint slides, please address the following issues:

1. What is business ethics?
2. Define duty-based ethical decision making and find an instance in the preceding hypotheticals in which to apply duty-based ethics.  Would your outcome change if you applied outcome-based ethical considerations?  Why or why not?
3. Define outcome-based ethical decision-making and find an instance in the preceding hypothetical that you didn’t discuss in number 2 in which to apply outcome-based ethics. Would your outcome change if you applied duty-based ethical considerations?  Why or why not?
4. How would you show ethical leadership in each of the three situations above?
5. Describe your own personal ethical values.