Business_and_Society

MGT 3110 Business and Society 2010/11 Coursework I Application of ethical theory to a case study vignette Contents Introduction 3 Identification of Ethical Issues and Stakeholders 3 Utilitarianism Ethic Theory 5 Postmodern Ethic Theory 5 Personal Reflection 7 Reference 8 Introduction According to the given four case studies I have select case study four to evaluate which is about Moyuka Car Company. Sam joined to MoyukaCompany one year ago as a product quality tester one of the best-selling model in this company. Sam received a report about the model’s he’s testing have a problem with the accelerating pedal. So he concern this issue as a safety issue of the customers and the company wise so he inform to his line manager who will pass Sam’s report to the senior management for further more action regarding to this matter. Identification of Ethical Issues and Stakeholders As Andrew Crane explains and Dirk Matten says “Stakeholder of a corporation is an individual or a group which either: is harmed by. Or benefits from, or whose rights can be violated, or have to be respected by the corporation.’’(Ref: Andrew Crane and Dirk Matten, page 58) Below graph gives a picture of the stakeholder model: According to this case study Sam raised a query about the problem in the acceleration on the leading brand model, which he got a good corporate from his line manager to report about the issue to the senior management whether to recall the entire model over the global or just ignore the situation as a random rare situation. There are mainly parties associated to the ethical issue of this company which are company senior management, Sam and company customer who purchased the relevant brand having the acceleration problem. Other sub party is the line manager of the company. Below bullet points will give an idea about stakeholders from the case study. * Customer: They have clear right to get a superior ride and safety for their money which they pay for the car. * Employee: They have the right to report about the problems about the safety and quality about the product if they found out something. * Senior Management: They have to disregard the matter if it happens on a very few cars considering it as a quality problem rather than recalling the model and facing for a finance difficulties and loosing profit. To clarify this case study I will use two main ethical theories, which are explain below: Utilitarianism Ethics Theory As Andrew Crane explains and Dirk Matten explain “Utilitarianism is an action is morally right if its results in the greatest amount of goods for the greatest amount of people affected by the action.’’(Ref: Andrew Crane and Dirk Matten, page 101) Utilitarianism theory is also named as “great happiness principle’’ too reason to naming this theory as happiness principle is it doesn’t evaluate individual involvement for a situation, it always focus on collective welfare that produced by a certain decision. According to the Sam’s report he only got few reports about the faulty isolated acceleration pedal comparing to the vast number of production on that popular brand. The report which is prepared by Sam’s line manager was reviewed by the senior management, As the company wise the senior management make a decision to disregard this matter as it’s a very few number of isolated pedal cars comparing how much they have manufactured on that leading brand car. Its more time consuming for the company as the company have to offer a dedicated service to the customers who are coming from all over the globe and have to use the current labour which the Moyuka Company have for repairing, servicing or diagnose the isolate pedals problem. Because if the company try to recruit more labour for this particular diagnoses purpose it will be an extra budget for company account. Also company wise, if the Moyuka Company start to recall that particular brand for inspection it will be an enormous financial consequence and a bad reputation for that best-selling model and for the company name too because of this few isolated pedal problem. Second theory which application for this case study is Postmodern Ethic Theory As Andrew Crane explains and Dirk Matten explains “postmodern ethics is an approach that locates morality beyond the sphere of rationality in an emotional ‘moral impulse’ towards others. It encourage individual actors to question everyday practices and rules, and to listen to and follow their emotion, inner conviction, and ‘gut feeling’ about what they think is right and wrong in a particular situation.’’(Ref: Andrew Crane and Dirk Matten, page115) Postmodern theory mostly subjective to the emotional beliefs that human judgment then is a gut feeling more than anything else. According to the case study Sam believe that this is not a quality wise problem and he defined this problem as safety issue and he believed there will be more faulty isolated pedal cars in future. But due to Sam’s work experience in this department which is monitoring product quality, the senior management believe or came for a conclusion on their experience that Sam becomes too much extra precaution about this matter. Also the senior management want to terminate this investigation which will lead to waste of time and money which will lead to more problem so they make Head of monitoring product quality department manager to send Sam a notice about disregard this matter as it never happen. Furthermore inform to changes Sam’s mind he made a note that this is not a safety issue it’s all about quality problem too. Sam believe as he is in the junior position senior management and the head of the management doesn’t consider about his alert about this safety issue, but senior management and the head of quality make up a decision comparing to the production quantity on that popular brand very few complaints about isolated paddle so they classified the problem as quality sake of the company name, reputation, profit, rest of the company employees and growth. Third sub theory which I can explain this case study is Feminist Ethics Theory Feminist theory ethics theory explains as an“approach that prioritizes empathy, harmonious and healthy social relationship, and care for one another, and avoidance of harm above abstract principles.’’(Ref: Andrew Crane and Dirk Matten, page 112) Below graph shows the contrasting gender based view of business ethics. | Male Approach | Feminist Ethics | View of humans | Autonomous separate, independent. Bearer of a function in the group. | Independent actors within a social web. | Moral goal | Fairness and impartiality.Maintenance the rules. | Avoid harm.Maintenance of relationship. | Moral problem | Conflict of rights between individuals. | Conflict of responsibilities in network relationship. | Values | Results. | Processes | Driving social forces | Competition, winning | Cooperation, compromise | (Ref: Andrew Crane and Dirk Matten, page 112) In this above graph highlighted parts shows the contrast of female approach comparing to male. Those highlighted parts are more useful to explain the 3rd sub theory for this case study. In Sam’s situation Kathy only did took down Sam’s investigation and data and pass the file to the senior management as a line manager she didn’t do anything more or give her opinion about this matter to Sam or senior management. All Kathy did so her process write it down and inform to superior nothing further. Personal Reflection Observing the whole case study what Sam did is correct as he got number of reports about isolated pedal problem he gather all the data and make up it as a file to present to his line manager who is Kathy and she took down what is necessary to present to the senior management to concern about this matter. In this case study there are two sides what Sam believes because he is still in junior position that management who are more superior than him won’t consider about his report about safety. Sam only consider about only his job but he didn’t look at the whole company, he didn’t check how many cars being product comparing to the faulty isolated pedal problem. Sam has done the correct thing by informing his line manager and senior management about the problem so in the future currently manufacturing cars on the production line the quality checking team will pay more attention every single little details on the car thanks for the Sam’s concern about the this pedal problem. Sam might believe that the superior team of the company didn’t consider about his report but at least his guts which make him come forward and inform to the managers will prevent any further incidents like this in future, as the company categories this incident as the quality problem so the manufacturing team will more focus on the quality in future. Moyuka car company senior management, line manager or head of quality department didn’t appreciate doing his job appropriately in the company or at least didn’t appreciate the concern about the matter. All they did is just terminate Sam’s investigate nothing further for his sacrifice for the company success. Reference Crane and Matten (2007) Business Ethics (2nd Edition) United States: Oxford University Press Inc. Ken Smith and Phil Johnson (1996) Business Ethics & Business behaviour (1st Edition) U.K. International Thomson Business Press Inc. Fisher and Lovell (2009) Business ethics and values: individual, corporate and international perspectives (3rd edition) Harlow : FT Prentice Hall George D. Chryssides and John H. Kaler. (2001). Utilitarianism: An Ethical of Welfare Thomson Learning