SCENARIO

You are the ethics officer of a marketing firm. The company prides itself on only engaging in ethical business practices. In order to ensure that all of its employees understand corporate ethical policy, new employees must attend an ethics training as part of the onboarding process. Additionally, every employee must attend an annual ethics training. These ethical training programs are developed by the marketing firms ethics officer (you), the marketing firms human resources (HR) director, and an outside consulting firm. In a joint development session, the team works through the training development materials that will be presented at this years two-day ethics training session. This year, the focus is on two primary topics: employees rights and responsibilities in the workplace and employers ethical responsibilities toward employees. In addition, hypothetical ethical scenarios are developed to evaluate the employees understanding of company ethical standards, general ethical decision-making, and desired courses of action.

A. Take on the role of the ethics officer in the scenario and address the following:

1. Describe three rights and responsibilities of employees based on the scenario.

2. Evaluate two ethical responsibilities of the employer within the context of the employer/employee relationship described in the scenario.

3. Develop one ethical business dilemma that can be used to demonstrate employee understanding of the companys ethical standards.

4. Evaluate the dilemma from part A3 from a utilitarian and relativistic perspective.

5. Describe two common ethical decisions that reflect corporate ethics and responsibilities that employees can face while working in a corporate setting. Note: These should be different from the ethical business dilemma in part A3.

6. Explain why each ethical decision in part A5 presents an ethical dilemma and how an individual might justify unethical behavior (e.g., common excuses).