Questions and Answers of Moral Issues In Business

In light of the fact lllat no federal statute specifically bars racial discrimination in private domestic commercial transactions be!IWen two business firms, and given the evidence that racism is an
What measures could Richmond have take
In yaur view, how pervasive Is job discrimination these days? Have you °' anyone you've known expenenced some form of II?
Do you think affirmative action programs are misguided, or are they justifiable and socially beneficial? Which side of the oomparable·worth issue are you on?
Whal explains sexual harassment?
In cooceming itSelf with Pettit's off-the-job conduct, did the Board of Education violate her right to privacy? Or was its concern with her lifestyle legitimate and employment related?
Was Pettlt's behavior "unprofessional"? Was it "immoral"?Oid tt show a "lack of fitness" to teach? Explain how you understand the terms in quotation marks.
Was the Board of Education justified in firing Pettit?Explain.
Was the court's verdict consistent with its earlier handling of the case of the homosexual teacher?
If teachers perform competently in the classroom, should they also be required to be moral exemplars in their private lives? Are employees in other occupations expected to provide a moral
Which of the following, In your view. would show unprofessional conduct, immorality, or lack of fitness to teach: drunken driving, smoking marijuana, advocating the use of marijuana, forging a check,
Under what conditions do employers have a legitimate interest in their employees' off-the-job conduct?
How Important Is privacy to you personally? Describe a situation, work-related or otherwise, In which you feh your privacy was threatened.
Describe your experiences with drug testing or personality testing. Have you or has anyone you know been subjected to job monitoring that seemed too intrusive?
Does business have a responsibility 10 provide employees with more satisfying work lives? Or to better accommodate their family needs?
Describe how you'd feel ff yoo had to take a psychologl·cal test or an honesty test either as an emploYIJe or as a precondition for employment Under what coodrtions. ff any, woold you take such a
How useful or informative do you think such tests are?Is their use a reasonable business policy'? Assuming that tests like those described are valid and relli!ble, are they fair? Explain.
Do you think tests like these invade privacy and, ff so, that this invasion is justified? Explain why or why not.
What ideals, obligations, and effects must be consid·ered in using psychological tests as pre-employment screens? In your view, which is the most Important consideration?
If you were an employer, would yoo require either employ·ees or job applicants to pass an honesty exam? Explain the moral principles that support your position.
What do you think a business's reaction would be if the government required its executive officers to submit to an honesty test as a precondition for the company's getting a government contract? If,
utilitarians would not find anything lnherenUy objectionable about psychological tests as long as the interests of all parties were taken into account and given equal consideration before such tests
Should there be a law prohibiting or regulating psycho·logical tests as a pre-employment ween? Should a decision to use these tests be made )CinUy by manage·ment and labor, or is testing for
If you were Jean Fanuchi, how would you feel about your decision to order the installation of the viewing and llstenfng devlces?What other options did she have?Did she overlook any moral
Do employees have a right not to be 51Jied on? If you were an employee at Fanuchi's store, would you think your privacy had been wrongly invaded?
How would you assess Fanuchi's actiOlls ff you were the owner of the store? Whose Interests are more important in this case-the employer's or the employees'?
Do you think Fanuchi acted immorally? Wily or why not?Evaluate her action by appeal to ethical principles.
How should Fanuchi and Katwalskl handle the information they've gathered about their employees? What ideals, obllgatlons, or effects are relevant to your answer?
Do you agree that Johnson Controls's fetal protection policy discriminated against women? Do pregnant women have a mora~not just a legal- right to wol1
Suppose exposure to lead did not affect sperm or the male reprOductive system. Would Johnson's policy still have been discriminatory? Would It hamper women's efforts to win equality in the workplace?
can there Ile a nondiscriminatory fetal protection policy?Is Justice White correct in arguing that companies have an obligation to avoid causing injury to fetuses just as they do to other •third
Suppcse a company forbids any employee capable of reproducing from working with lead. Would such a policy wrongly interfere with employees' freedom of choice?Would it be an invasion of their privacy?
Evaluate fetal protection policies from the egoistic, utilitarian, and Kantian perspectives. What rights are involved? What are the likely benefits and harms of such policies?
If they are fully informed, do employees with a certain medical condition have a right to work at jobs that can be hazardous to the health of people in their condition?Or can company policy or OSHA
Would you agree with Joseph Kinney that the real issue is the need to remove toxins from the wor11place? Is this a realistic goal?
If you have, or plan to have, cllildren, what sort of balance do you seek between career and family life? Do you believe that the mindset of corporate America is conducive to the type of
Should the United Stales require companies to provide paid maternity leave? Should it assist them to do so?What about paternity leave?
Do companies already have a mommy track, whether they call it that or not? Is the idea a good one? Is tt somehow discriminatory against women? Against men?
Should men be more actively involved in childrearing?If not, why not? If so, what steps, ii any, should either business or society take to encourage this?
Should special organizational arrangements be made tor workers who wish to combine career and child raising?If so, identify the steps that companies can take to accommodate parental needs more
Does a firm have an obligation to give employees the flexibility to work out the particular balance of career and family that is right for them? Or does this go beyond the social responsibilities of
Can paid maternity or paternity leave make sense from a business point of view, even if tt is not subsidized by the government?
Is the employer-employee relationship ·essentially contractual"? If tt is, what are the implications of this for business ethics?
Is privacy an employee right? Explain why or why not If it is a righ~ give examples of employer actions or policies that would violate this right.
Do yoo agree that the central question regarding d'rug testing in employment is whether the information sought is job relevant? Are there other reasons for drug testing that don't tum on this issue?
Are you perooaded by OesJardiris and Duska's reasons for rejecting the job-performance argument for drug testing?Explain why or why noL
How serious is the danger posed by employee d111g use?Oo you agree that there are important limits to the "prevention of harm• argument for drug testing?
Assuming that drug testing is justified in the particular circumstances, what procedural restriction, if any, should be placed on it, and why? Are DesJardins and Ouska correct to maintain that the
How voluntary do you think employee consent to drug testing really is? Is the voluntariness of corisent an important moral Issue?
What steps do you think employers should take to deal with the problem of employee drug use?
lippke malntains that privacy is valuable because of its relation to autonomy and (following Joseph Kupterj highlights two ways in which privacy contributes to autonomy.Explain 1l1e connections
RelyiOiJ on a contractual model of employer-employee relations, some writers like DesJardins and Duska use the concept of job relQvance to restrict the information employers may justifiably gather
By contrast with tile contractual modet, wllat are lippke's reasons both for opposing employers' acquiring certain sorts of information and for objecting to certain methods of gathering it?
Do you agree with lippke that there is a grave imbalance in power between employers and employees and that the workplace is characterized by authoritarian management structures that deprive employees
How does Lippke respond to the argument that the property rights of owners and stockholders should take precedence over the privacy rights or employees?Do you agree that the existing organization of
Do family-friendly workplace policies sometimes Impose a burden on childless people? Is It unfair for corporations to provide special benefits for employees with children and Illus spend more money
Mills seeks a middle way between the view that producing children is a positive social good that we should all support and the view that It Is an environmentally irresponsible choice. Explain. ls the
Assess tile argument tllat because individuals choose to have children, they are not entitled to any special benefits or considefation in the workplace. Ate you persuaded by her argument tllat It Is
Explain why Mills finds it ' problematic when differential benefits are provided to parents . . . by employers.'Do you agree or disagree with her reasoning? Should companies try to treat parents and
Ale the income-lax breaks that parents receive fair or unfair? Mills apparently favors the government's providing special benems to people witll families. If so, why don't corporations have a similar
Is It in the self-interest of corporations to adopt famllyfrfendly workplace policies? What policies do you think companies should adopt with regard to maternity/paternity leave, release time for
What are the different forms or mechanisms that employee participation can take, and what are the different issues available for participatory decisions? What type of employee participation do you
Mccall argues for participation in terms of tile values of fair treatment, human dignity, self-respect, physical and mental health, and the promotion of a democratic society. Explain how each of
On what grounds does management typically resist vrofker participation? How sound are its reasons for doing so? Does participation violate the rights of tile owners of corporate property?
Is worker participation compatible with the efficient functioning of a free-enterprise system?
Do you think that more extensive worker participation would make companies more socially responsible? Do you agree with McCall's conclusion "that our society ought to move vigorously in tile
Identify the values and describe the attitudes that have contributed to pollution problems like those at Herculaneum. How would you feel H you lived in Herculaneum?
Do individuals inside the company, now or In the past, bear responsibillty for causing tile environmental damage at Herculaneum, or is it only the company as a whole?Is that responsibility shared by
Who should pay the costs of cleaning up Herculaneumtile company? The town? The state of Missouri? The federal government? In general, whOse responsibility Is it to clean up the country's hazardous
Was either the government or Doe Run morally required to buy tile contaminated homes? Should anything else be done fur those families? Whal, if anything, should be done for tile town now?
Is Herculaneum better off wi1hout the smelter. or should environmental standards have been waived in order to save jobs? Sllould the company have invested In tile tech·nology necessaiy to bring its
Is ii fair for Superlund to fine polluters for dumping or polluting that was legal at the time it OCCIKled? Is 1t fair that each individual polluter have full liability for cleaning up environmental
Wllh regard to pollution in general and the disposal of toxic wastes in particular, what are the obligations of Individual manufacturers and of society as a whole to future generations?
What do yau see as our most pressing environmental problems, and what role can and should business play in addressing them?
can companies be truly green, committed to sustalnabllity, and economically viable?
Oo onty human interests matter morally, or is the natural wortd intrinsically valuable? In your view, fs our current treatment of animals, In particular, factocy farming, morally legltlmate?
What attitudes and values on the part of business and others lead to the creation of areas like the "valley of dealll'?
Should the lllird world have more pollution, as Lawrence Summers argues? Assess his argument that dirty industries should move to poorer and less·polluted areas.
Some say, ' Pollution is the price of progress.' ls this assertion correct? What is meant by "progress"? Who in fact pays Ille price? Explain the moral and the economic issues raised by the
Do human beings have a moral right to a livable environment?To a nonpolluted environment? It might be argued that if people In the "valley of death" don't complain and don't wish to move, then they
Assess Ille contention that people in Ille third world should learn from the errors of the West and seek development without pollution. Should there be uniform, global environmental standards, or
Even though they will probably be hit hardest by it, poor nations are less able than are rich countries to deal with the consequences of global warming. As a resul~ do rich nations owe to it to
Are environmentalists right to be concerned about the environmental impact of SlNs? How do you explain the demand for ever larger passenger vehicles? Will higher gas prices change that?
In developing and producing the Excursion, was the Ford Motor Company sacrificing the environment to profits, or was it acting in a socially responsible way by makmg the Excursion relatively energy
Assess William Clay Ford's promise to make his company the 'wortd's most environmentally friendly automaker.·What are the environmental reSjlOllsibilities of automakers?
Is Ford Motor Company simply responding to consumer demand tor large vehicles, or is It helping to shape and encourage that demand?
Should there be tighter pollution restrlcHons on SUVs?Should the government try to discourage the production and use of SUVs?
Is it moral or environmentally responsible to drive an SUV?What would Jesus drive?
Ooes an ancient redwood forest have value otller than lts economic one as potential lumber? ti so, what is this value, and how is it to be weighed against the interests of a company like Mmam? Are
ts It morally permissible for private owners to do as they wish with the timbertand they own? Explain why or why not. What's your assessment of Hurwitz? Is he a robber baron, a socially responsible
Were mainstream environmentalists right to try to thwart Hurwitz, or were they simply trying to Impose their values on others? Does a radlcal group like Earth Rrst! that engages in sabotage go too
Do we have a moral obligation to save old redwood forests? can a forest have either moral or legal rights?Does an old-growth forest have value in and of itself, or is its value only a !unction of
Before its takeover by Hurwitz, did Pacific lumber neglect its obligations to its stockholders by not logging at a faster rate? What would be a morally responsible policy for a timber company to
How would you respond to the argument that there is no need to try to save the Headwaters (or any olher private)forest because there are already tens of lhousands of acres of old-growth redwood
Was the deal that the U.S. government and the state of California struck with Pacific lumber a fair and reasonable one? Old the taxpayers end up paying too much, as environmentalists lhink? Was
The wwd •sustainable" is tossed around a lot. What does it mean to you?
Is it fair for environmentalists to single out companies like Unilever and Nestle that are more socially responsible than most and which are relatively small consumers of palm oil, or is this
How far must corporations go to ensure that the various ingredients used in their products are prO
Can monitortng and self-regulation by Industry groups like the Roundtable effectively address environmental issues, or will outside pressure always be needed? Was Greenpeace right to act as It did,
Preventing deforestation is important, but once previously forested land has been Cleared, whether six months ago or sixty years ago, is there anything wrong about using it to produce palm oil now?

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