Business Ethics Research Assignment: Negligence and Product Safety

Business Ethics
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Business Ethics
5. Negligence and Product Safety
Negligence is defined as the failure to apply reasonable care that results in harm to another. Negligence codifies two fundamental ethical principles. The first principle is one can be negligence by doing something that one ought not to have done such as ignoring a stop sign. The other principle is that negligence can occur when one fails to do something one ought to have done such as failing to inspect a product for leakage before releasing it to the market. One standard of foreseeability discussed in the test is that people should be held accountable for only those harms they foresaw occurring. In this case, if the person foresees possible harm and fails to handle it before hand, the person would be negligence. The other standard of foreseeability is where one is required to avoid harms even those they have not thought about, but those they should have thought about if they had been reasonable. This means ensuring that that one is reasonable enough to think of all possible harms. The third standard of foreseeability is where a reasonable person is able to take on a standard of thoughtful, reflective, as well as judicious decision making. The author thinks this third standard is correct because producers have more expertise than average person and so they can think like this. Yes McDonald was negligent in the way it served its coffee because they should have thought how people who are drinking while driving should have been holding their hot coffee. They should have thought about the possibility of spills while driving.
6. Marketing Ethics
Manipulation is to secretly direct behavior without the explicit consent or conscious understanding of the other. Deception is deliberately causing another to believe something is true when it is not. To lie is also to say something that is not true. The ethical wrong in manipulation, deception, and lying depend most directly on the intent. This is because the intention of these practices is to treat the other party as a means to an end, or as an object used as opposed to an independent person with one’s rights. Manipulation is done with the intention of self-interests over the rights of another person and this makes it ethically wrong. Kantian theory best explains the ethical wrong of manipulation because it views wrongness and rightness of an action on whether they fulfil a duty. If the action fulfils a duty of self-interest it is wrong, but if it is for the good of everyone it is right. Manipulation has the intention of using another as a means and so it is ethically wrong. Modern marketing has created dysfunctional affluent economy because of manipulation. For example, trivial things such as children enjoying themselves has been manipulated such that advertisements target children with goodies and candy that promote obesity. Another example, is when a pharmaceutical company targets vulnerable diabetic patients by exaggerating the potential of a certain drug.
Preferential Hiring
One means of preferential treatment is giving preference to a previously disadvantaged candidate among mostly equally qualified individuals. For example, giving a job to a person of color. The second pr...