Based on your readings in Unit 1, you understand that society recognizes the value of ethics. The cases in Unit 1 focused on individual conduct. But businesses are groups of individuals, and those individuals' ethical standards may not translate into a group setting. In addition, businesses are accountable to shareholders, creditors, and others who may be affected but are not always part of the business's decision processes and ethical analysis.

Businesses and managers also need a framework and process for ethical analysis. Some businesses simply adopt an ethical standard of following the law. "If it's legal, then it's ethical" is their standard. However, many actions well within the law still raise ethical issues. For example, the federal standard for slaughtering cows is that they must be "standers," that is, able to stand up as they enter the pens. If they are "downers," they cannot be put into the meat supply and must be euthanized. However, motivated not to lose those sunk costs in lost cattle, the employees at Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. used water hoses, electric prods, and forklifts to get the cattle to their feet so that they could be slaughtered for meat. A Humane Society undercover video documented this interpretation of the "stander" regulation. The result was the largest recall of beef in the United States. The company was following a legal standard, but by not considering the intent of the regulation or looking beyond the immediate cost savings of getting more cattle into the meat supply, its analysis did not take into account the risk of diseased meat making its way into the meat supply. Just the discovery of Hallmark/Westland's operations resulted in a shutdown of the company's operations. The plant has reopened under new ownership and is now called American Beef Packers. (See Case 4.18 for more information.) The defense of compliance with the law ignores the underlying ethical issues and the resulting risk. In other words, the company was not walking through the categories, rationalizations, and analytical steps you studied in Unit 1.

Ethical decisions require businesses to look beyond compliance. There will always be a loophole, as you studied in the discussion "It's a gray area" in Unit 1. But as you will see throughout the remainder of this unit and the book, those loopholes are temporary and risky. A standard of legal compliance is akin to a pilot shaving the treetops of legal boundaries. As military pilots advise, "You can only tie the record for low-altitude flying." Asking whether conduct is legal is but one part of an ethical analysis.
Businesses have other factors at play in ethical dilemmas, beyond just the personal introspection you studied in Unit 1. There are organizational behavior factors such as performance and incentive plans. For example, at Hallmark/Westland, the manager of the cattle pens told police that he had to meet a quota of 500 cattle per day for slaughter. \({ }^{2}\) Those performance pressures have to be factored in as you make business decisions. The issue would be clear to us in the laboratory setting of the classroom because our job, bonus, retention, or promotion is not on the line. Business decisions are made in the midst of economic pressures that must be studied and understood in order to analyze an ethical issue completely.....................................
Discussion Questions 1. As you did in Unit 1, think of something that you did at work in the past year that may have been motivated by the economic pressures at work, but it still bothers you. For example, one manager wrote, "I disagreed with a performance evaluation of an employee, but I didn't speak up." Another wrote, "I let someone else take the blame for something I did." Fit these actions and your own exampie into one of the categories of ethical dilemmas in Unit 1. Then think through the reasons that you and these managers did something that later bothered you.
2. Now think of something you did in your personal life in the past year that still bothers you. For example, one student wrote, "I lied to relatives on the phone so that they wouldn't come and visit." Another wrote, "I accepted cable I had not paid for," or "I didn't tell my wife about a bonus I received." Again, think through the categories that apply as well as the reasons for doing these things.
3. As you think through your bothersome business and personal actions, decide whether ethics in our personal lives and business lives are really different.