A) Should Gillian secretly ask her cousins to help her buy put options on her company's stock using inside knowledge? Assume that she will not face any legal consequences. Explain your reasoning using at least one technical term from Ch. 7 to demonstrate your understanding of the material.
B) What kinds of virtues do you think Gillian should exhibit while making her decision and interacting with her company? Why would her decision-making process be identity-based rather than consequence-based (e.g., ethical egoist)?
C) Do you think virtue ethics is a viable way to make decisions in today's capitalist and individual-focused business world? If so, how? If not, could we change things (at the individual and corporate character-level) to help people like Gillian and you make more virtuous decisions?
CHAPTER perform just disposed to repeatedly is worse to do so. ples action. One donation to charity is not enough to make a person generous. Not self-discipline, and practice. To be virtuous, it is not enough to cy of acting well for personal gain an indication of virtue. Adopting honesty as the policy does not make a person honest. Generous people are with the needy and honest people want to tell the truth, even when it is inconto People are perfectly virtuous if it is second nature for them do the right what they should do. They do the right thing intuitively. In this, they are Perfect Virtue involves a form of moral perception; perfectly virtuous people skilled drivers who naturally make the right decisions in dangerous circumstance of skilled hockey players who instantly make the best play. To follow a virtue ethics rule of action is to emulate how a virtuous person wouls in a problematic situation. People who are not perfectly virtuous, which is most of us, reason by imagining what someone whose moral excellence we admire-mothers, trice bosses, business heroes, or religious leaders would do in the situation that we face Virtue also requires practical wisdom. Moral perceptiveness, the ability "see" the relevant ethical issues in a situation, and moral competence, the ability to what to do in response to these ethical issues are forms of wisdom that are not res ily reduced to calculations of consequences or applications of principle. Wisdom i also involved in the understanding of the various virtues and vices. A virtue is the mean between two vices, as courage is the mean between cowardice and recklessas For example, it is generous for a business to make a reasonable donation to a charita- ble cause. However a disposition towards offering too little would be greedy, while a disposition towards offering too much might be imprudent. An honest business selling a product should be frank about the qualities of that product and its manufacturing However to say too little would be dishonest, while to say too much might entail the disclosure of trade secrets. The boundaries between virtue and vice are not easy to determine, and may be different for different roles in society. We must learn a certain skill in applying virtue concepts . Doing so will give us a conceptual vocabulary for wrong, good and bad, or just and unjust. thinking about ethical decisions that is much richer than simple divisions into right and Vice Virtue Dahonesty Timidity Greed Meanness Unfawness Vice Honesty Courage Moderation Generosity Justice Table 7.1: A virtue is the mean between two vices so the rich conceptual vocabulary availahl Over-disclosure Recklessness Self-sacrifice Excessiveness Rigidness 112 COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP Should Gillian Trade on Her Inside Knowledge? Gillian Lee is the senior administrative assistant to Jerry Adams, the vice-president of Operations for Global Potash Enterprises. GPE 15 staking its future on its purchase of a mineral concession in northern Saskatchewan. The GPE stock price has been very val atile recently as investors await the publication of a gcologist's report on the size of a potish deposition Gres concession Right now investor opinion is optimistic, and cu rodenit 4.52-week high, The geology report is due out in two days, but letry has already received a preliminary copy, and Gillian sawiton hsdesk. Not only did she sce the report, she took a moment to glance inside it. The report is very bad news. There is not enough potash in the ground to make mining worthwhile, and coz is in trouble. Its stock price is likely to collapse when investors see the report. Also Gre will have to make significant staff layoffs. Gillian is happy at GPE and Jerry has been a great boss, but she sees that she will be let go or asked to work for a secretaris salary Ever since GPE gambled on this potash concession, Gillian has been fantasizing about what she might do. One of her tentative plans involves betting against the stock price of cru by secretly buying put options on GPE stock. She knows the penalties for de trading are severe, that securities regulators are very diligent at discovering per petrators and that suspicion will fall on cry and those around him because of Jerry's positione However, she has a second cousin, Patrick Lee, in Hong Kong who buys and sells securities. She thinks that if she goes to an Internet cafe, sets up a new webmail account, emails her cousin Sally Wong, and ask 15 ron Patrick verbally to buy her 50,000 put options on GoE stock, then securities regulators will never know What she dig. Her credit is good with Patrick, and she can trust Sally and him as family members. Exercising those pur options will not make her hugely wealthy, but it will enable her to find an MA and get a new and better job Though she has dreamed up this plan, and she does not think that regulators will war 111 Totice, she is still worrisd. She is an administrative assistant, not an officer of the run Yet, she feels an obligation to her firm's stockholders to further their interests, and an day to Cenot to take advantage of his trust. She has always been lova and est at work. She has many friends at GPE, and enjoys being a member of the Gre beto put options, even though she will perhanser ceciting them Because she is commShe does not feel much obligation to the speculators who willSSLIDE In consider activity reports would not reveal her trades.to the market. Het WISWC akan antar disadvantage. Gre has paid both for the concession and for the sticly small transaction will have little cffection Grafinal share orie. or put any Sw Gan put her blandinto action? e la the AN 127 CHAPTER perform just disposed to repeatedly is worse to do so. ples action. One donation to charity is not enough to make a person generous. Not self-discipline, and practice. To be virtuous, it is not enough to cy of acting well for personal gain an indication of virtue. Adopting honesty as the policy does not make a person honest. Generous people are with the needy and honest people want to tell the truth, even when it is inconto People are perfectly virtuous if it is second nature for them do the right what they should do. They do the right thing intuitively. In this, they are Perfect Virtue involves a form of moral perception; perfectly virtuous people skilled drivers who naturally make the right decisions in dangerous circumstance of skilled hockey players who instantly make the best play. To follow a virtue ethics rule of action is to emulate how a virtuous person wouls in a problematic situation. People who are not perfectly virtuous, which is most of us, reason by imagining what someone whose moral excellence we admire-mothers, trice bosses, business heroes, or religious leaders would do in the situation that we face Virtue also requires practical wisdom. Moral perceptiveness, the ability "see" the relevant ethical issues in a situation, and moral competence, the ability to what to do in response to these ethical issues are forms of wisdom that are not res ily reduced to calculations of consequences or applications of principle. Wisdom i also involved in the understanding of the various virtues and vices. A virtue is the mean between two vices, as courage is the mean between cowardice and recklessas For example, it is generous for a business to make a reasonable donation to a charita- ble cause. However a disposition towards offering too little would be greedy, while a disposition towards offering too much might be imprudent. An honest business selling a product should be frank about the qualities of that product and its manufacturing However to say too little would be dishonest, while to say too much might entail the disclosure of trade secrets. The boundaries between virtue and vice are not easy to determine, and may be different for different roles in society. We must learn a certain skill in applying virtue concepts . Doing so will give us a conceptual vocabulary for wrong, good and bad, or just and unjust. thinking about ethical decisions that is much richer than simple divisions into right and Vice Virtue Dahonesty Timidity Greed Meanness Unfawness Vice Honesty Courage Moderation Generosity Justice Table 7.1: A virtue is the mean between two vices so the rich conceptual vocabulary availahl Over-disclosure Recklessness Self-sacrifice Excessiveness Rigidness 112 COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP Should Gillian Trade on Her Inside Knowledge? Gillian Lee is the senior administrative assistant to Jerry Adams, the vice-president of Operations for Global Potash Enterprises. GPE 15 staking its future on its purchase of a mineral concession in northern Saskatchewan. The GPE stock price has been very val atile recently as investors await the publication of a gcologist's report on the size of a potish deposition Gres concession Right now investor opinion is optimistic, and cu rodenit 4.52-week high, The geology report is due out in two days, but letry has already received a preliminary copy, and Gillian sawiton hsdesk. Not only did she sce the report, she took a moment to glance inside it. The report is very bad news. There is not enough potash in the ground to make mining worthwhile, and coz is in trouble. Its stock price is likely to collapse when investors see the report. Also Gre will have to make significant staff layoffs. Gillian is happy at GPE and Jerry has been a great boss, but she sees that she will be let go or asked to work for a secretaris salary Ever since GPE gambled on this potash concession, Gillian has been fantasizing about what she might do. One of her tentative plans involves betting against the stock price of cru by secretly buying put options on GPE stock. She knows the penalties for de trading are severe, that securities regulators are very diligent at discovering per petrators and that suspicion will fall on cry and those around him because of Jerry's positione However, she has a second cousin, Patrick Lee, in Hong Kong who buys and sells securities. She thinks that if she goes to an Internet cafe, sets up a new webmail account, emails her cousin Sally Wong, and ask 15 ron Patrick verbally to buy her 50,000 put options on GoE stock, then securities regulators will never know What she dig. Her credit is good with Patrick, and she can trust Sally and him as family members. Exercising those pur options will not make her hugely wealthy, but it will enable her to find an MA and get a new and better job Though she has dreamed up this plan, and she does not think that regulators will war 111 Totice, she is still worrisd. She is an administrative assistant, not an officer of the run Yet, she feels an obligation to her firm's stockholders to further their interests, and an day to Cenot to take advantage of his trust. She has always been lova and est at work. She has many friends at GPE, and enjoys being a member of the Gre beto put options, even though she will perhanser ceciting them Because she is commShe does not feel much obligation to the speculators who willSSLIDE In consider activity reports would not reveal her trades.to the market. Het WISWC akan antar disadvantage. Gre has paid both for the concession and for the sticly small transaction will have little cffection Grafinal share orie. or put any Sw Gan put her blandinto action? e la the AN 127
