Synopses & Reviews
Packed with real-life examples of business decisions gone awry, the 8th Edition of BUSINESS ETHICS: CASE STUDIES AND SELECTED READINGS explores the complex issues of business ethics from the leaders' perspectives. This best-selling text offers a rare collection of readings which examines the business decision-making processes of many types of leaders, while revealing some of the common factors that push them over ethical lines they might not otherwise cross. A combination of short and long cases, readings, hypothetical situations, and current ethical dilemmas, BUSINESS ETHICS: CASE STUDIES AND SELECTED READINGS provides a stimulating and thorough basis for evaluating business ethics, and encourages stronger values in future business leaders.
About the Author
Marianne M. Jennings, Emeritus Professor of Legal and Ethical Studies, taught at the WP Carey School of Business, Arizona State University from 1977 through 2011. She has six textbooks and four monographs in circulation with the 10th edition of REAL ESTATE LAW book published in December 2012 and the 22nd editions of her ANDERSON: BUSINESS LAW books were published in January 2013. She was director of the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics from 1995 to 1999. She has worked with government agencies, professional organizations, colleges and universities, and Fortune 500 companies on ethics training and culture. She has conducted over 500 workshops for businesses, professional groups, and government agencies. She is a contributing editor of Corporate Finance Review and Real Estate Law Journal. Two of her books have been named Library Journal's book of the year. Her books have been translated into three languages. Her book, THE SEVEN SIGNS OF ETHICAL COLLAPSE, was published by St Martin's Press and has been used as both an audit tool and a primer by numerous organizations for creating and sustaining an ethical culture. In 2011, she was named one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders by Trust Across America and in 2012, she was named one of the 100 most influential people in business ethics by Ethisphere magazine. She served on the board of directors for Arizona Public Service (now Pinnacle West), the owner of the Palo Verde Nuclear Station, from 1987 through 2000. She has served on INPO's advisory council since 2005. She conducts ethics training and ethical culture assessments for businesses, including Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, professional associations, and nonprofit organizations.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements. UNIT 1: ETHICAL THEORY, PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS, OUR REASONING FLAWS, AND TYPES OF ETHICAL DILEMMAS. Section A: Defining Ethics. Reading 1.1 You, Your Values, and a Credo. Reading 1.2 The Parable of the Sadhu. Reading 1.3 What Are Ethics? From Line-Cutting to Kant. Reading 1.4 The Types of Ethical Dilemmas: From Truth to Honesty to Conflicts. Reading 1.5 On Rationalizing and Labeling: The Things We Do That Make Us Uncomfortable, But We Do Them Anyway. Case 1.6 "I Was Just Following Orders": The CIA, Interrogation, and the Role of Legal Opinions. Reading 1.6 The Slippery Slope, the Blurred Lines, and How We Never Do Just One Thing. Case 1.7 Hank Greenberg and AIG and Steve Cohen and SAC Capital Section B: Resolving Ethical Dilemmas. Reading 1.8 Some Simple Tests for Resolving Ethical Dilemmas. Reading 1.9 Some Steps for Analyzing Ethical Dilemmas. Reading 1.10 On Plagiarism. Case 1.11 The Little Teacher Who Could: Piper, Kansas and Term Papers. Case 1.12 Dog Walkers and Scoopers. Case 1.13 Puffing Your Resume. Case 1.14 Dad, the Actuary, and the Stats Class. Case 1.15 Wi-Fi Piggybacking. Case 1.16 Stuyvesant High School and the Cheating Culture of Excellence. Case 1.17 The Rigged Election. Case 1.18 Speeding: You Can't Survive on the Roads Unless You Do. Case 1.19 Hazing, Drinking, and Campuses. Case 1.20 The Pack of Gum. UNIT 2: SOLVING ETHICAL DILEMMAS AND PERSONAL INTROSPECTION. Section A: Business and Ethics: How do they work together? Reading 2.1 What's Different about Business Ethics? Reading 2.2 The Ethics of Responsibility. Reading 2.3 Is Business Bluffing Ethical? Section B: What Gets in the way of ethical decisions in business? Reading 2.4 How Leaders Lose Their Way: What Price Hubris? Reading 2.5 Moral Relativism and the Either/Or Conundrum. Reading 2.6 P=ƒ(x) The Probability of an Ethical Outcome Is a Function of the Amount of Money Involved: Pressure. Case 2.7 MF Global, Jon Corzine, and a Bankruptcy. Case 2.8 CEOs, Lance Armstrong, Manti Te'o, Tiger Woods, Deception, and Public Perception. Section C: Resolving Ethical Dilemmas in Business. Reading 2.9 Framing Issues Carefully: A Structured Approach for Solving Ethical Dilemmas and Trying Out Your Ethical Skills on Some Business Cases. Case 2.10 Galleon Hedge Fund: Expert Networks, Friendly Discussions or Insider Trading? Case 2.11 What Was Up with Wall Street? The Goldman Standard and Shades of Gray. Case 2.12 Making Believe We Are At Work or Being Loyal: The Alibis of Technology. Case 2.13 Make Believe Reality TV: Storage Wars and Reconstructed Home Sales. Case 2.14 Travel Expenses: A Chance for Extra Income. Case 2.15 Do Cheaters Prosper? Case 2.16 The Home Repair Contractor Tempted by Customers and Contractors. Case 2.17 Penn State: Framing Ethical Issues. Case 2.18 Olympus: Framing Ethical Issues. UNIT 3: BUSINESS, STAKEHOLDERS, SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND SUSTAINABILITY. Section A: Business and Society: The Tough Issues of Economics, Social Responsibility, and Business. Reading 3.1 The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Profits. Reading 3.2 A Stakeholder Theory of the Modern Corporation. Reading 3.3 Business with a Soul: A Reexamination of What Counts in Business Ethics. Reading 3.4 Appeasing Stakeholders with Public Relations. Reading 3.5 John Mackey on Capitalism and the Corporation. Reading 3.6 Marjorie Kelly and the Divine Right of Capital. Reading 3.7 Schools of Thought on Social Responsibility. Section B: Applying social responsibility and stakeholder theory. Case 3.8 Skittles, Trayvon Martin, and Social Responsibility. Case 3.9 Guns, Stock Prices, Safety, Liability, and Social Responsibility. Case 3.10 The Craigslist Connections: Facilitating Crime? Case 3.11 The Race for the Cure and Planned Parenthood Backlash. Reading 3.12 The Regulatory Cycle, Social Responsibility, Business Strategy, and Equilibrium. Case 3.13 Fannie, Freddie, Wall Street, Main Street, and the Subprime Mortgage Market: Of Moral Hazards and ReFis. Case 3.14 Cruises, Comfort, and Cost. Case 3.15 Ice-T, the Body Count Album, and Shareholder Uprisings. Case 3.16 Athletes and Doping: Costs, Consequences, and Profits. Reading 3.17 Stock Options, Backdating, and Disclosure Options: What Happened Here? Case 3.18 Back Treatments and Meningitis in an Under-the-Radar Industry. Section C: Social responsibility and sustainability. Reading 3.19 The New Environmentalism. Case 3.20 GM, the Volt, and Halted Sales and Production. Case 3.21 Buying Local: The Safety Issues in Farmers' Markets. Case 3.22 Global Warming Data. Case 3.23 Biofuels and Food Shortages in Guatemala. Case 3.24 The Dictator's Wife in Louboutin Shoes Featured in Vogue Magazine. Case 3.25 Herman Miller and Its Rain Forest Chairs. Section D: Government as a Stakeholder. Case 3.26 Solyndra: Bankruptcy of Solar Resources? Case 3.27 Stanford University and Government Payment for Research. Case 3.28 Minority-Owned Businesses and Reality. Case 3.29 Prosecutorial Misconduct: Ends Justifying Means? Case 3.29 Health Care: Whose Responsibility? Whose Cost? UNIT 4: ETHICS AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE. Section A: Temptation at work for individual gain and that credo. Reading 4.1 The Moving Line. Reading 4.2 Not All Employees Are Equal When It Comes to Moral Development. Reading 4.3 Why Corporations Can't Control Chicanery. Case 4.4 Swiping Oreos at Work: Is It a Big Deal? Case 4.5 A Primer on Accounting Issues and Ethics: Earnings Management, Smoothing Earnings, and Manipulation. Case 4.6 Law School Application Consultants. Case 4.7 The MyTai Concession and Ferragamo Shoes and the County Supervisors. Section B: The Organizational Behavior factors. Reading 4.8 The Layers of Ethical Issues: Individual, Organization, Industry, and Society. Reading 4.9 The Effects of Compensation Systems: Incentives, Bonuses, and Pay. Case 4.10 Rogues: Bad Apples or Bad Barrel: Jett and Kidder, Leeson and Barings, Kerviel and Societe Generale, London Whales and Chase, Kweku Adoboli and UBS, and LIBOR. Case 4.11 FINOVA and the Loan Write-Off. Case 4.12 Inflating SAT Scores for Rankings and Bonuses. Case 4.13 Hiding the Slip-Up on Oil Lease Accounting: Interior Motives. Section C: The structural factors: Governance, example, and leadership. Reading 4.14 A Primer on Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank. Reading 4.15 The Bathsheba Factor and Leaders Who Lose Their Way: Macbeth, Martha Stewart, and David Petraeus. Case 4.16 WorldCom: The Little Company That Couldn't After All. Case 4.17 Bank of America: Public Disclosures and the Board. Reading 4.18 Getting Information from Employees to Leaders Who Respond. Case 4.19 Westland/Hallmark Meat Packing Company and Standing Cattle. Case 4.20 Paul Wolfowitz and the World Bank HR Issues. Section D: The industry practices and legal factors. Reading 4.21 The Subprime Saga: Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill, and CDOs. Case 4.22 Enron: The CFO, Conflicts, and Cooking the Books with Natural Gas and Electricity. Case 4.23 The Ethics of Walking Away and Bankruptcy. Section E: The Fear-and-Silence factors. Case 4. 24 HealthSouth: The Scrushy Way. Case 4.25 Royal Dutch and the Reserves. Case 4.26 Dennis Kozlowski: Tyco and the $6,000 Shower Curtain. Case 4.27 Bausch and Lomb and Krispy Kreme: Channel Stuffing and Cannibalism. Reading 4.28 A Primer on Whistleblowing. Case 4.29 Beech-Nut and the No-Apple-Juice Apple Juice. Case 4.30 NASA and the Space Shuttle Booster Rockets. Case 4.31 Diamond Walnuts and Troubled Growers. Case 4.32 New Era: If It Sounds Too Good To Be True. Section F: The Culture of Goodness. Case 4. 33 Bernie Madoff: Just Stay Away From the 17th Floor. Case 4.34 Adelphia: Doing Good with Company Money. Case 4.35 The Atlanta Public School System: Good Scores By Creative Teachers. Case 4.36 BP and the Deepwater Horizon Explosion: Safety First? Case 4.37 The NBA Referee and Gambling for Tots. Case 4.38 Giving and Spending the United Way. Case 4.39 The Baptist Foundation: Funds of the Faithful. UNIT 5: ETHICS AND CONTRACTS Section A: Contract Negotiations: All Is Fair and Conflicting Interests. Case 5. 3 The Governor and Negotiations for Filling a President's Senate Seat. Case 5.4 Facebook and the Pre-IPO Information. Case 5.5 Finding a Way Around Government Regulations. Case 5.6 Subway: Is 11 Inches the Same as 12 Inches? Case 5.7 Sears and High-Cost Auto Repairs. Section B: Promises, Performance, and Reality. Case 5. 8 Pay-Day Loans and Checking Account Deductions. Case 5.9 Pensions: Promises, Payments, and Bankruptcy. Case 5.10 Department Store Returns or Rentals? Case 5.11 Government Contracts, Research, and Double-Dipping. Case 5.12 When Corporations Pull Promises Made to Government. Case 5.13 Intel and the Chips: When You Have Made a Mistake. Case 5.14 Mortgage Foreclosure: Robo-Signatures and "Close Enough". Case 5.15 Red Cross and the Use of Funds. UNIT 6: ETHICS IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS. Section A: Conflicts between the corporation's ethics and business practices in foreign countries. Reading 6.1 Why An International Code of Ethics Would Be Good For Business? Case 6.2 Chiquita Banana and Mercenary Protection. Case 6.3 Pirates! The Bane of Transnational Shippers. Case 6.4 The Former Soviet Union: A Study of Three Companies and Values in Conflict. Case 6.5 Product Dumping. Case 6.6 Sweatshops, Suicides, Nike, Apple, and Campus Boycotts. Case 6.7 Bhopal: When Safety Standards Differ. Case 6.8 Nestle: Products That Don't Fit Cultures. Case 6.9 The Internet, Censorship, and Human Rights. Section B: Bribes, grease payments, and when in Rome... Reading 6.10 A Primer on the FCPA. Case 6.11 Siemens and Bribery, Everywhere. Case 6.12 Walmart in Mexico. Case 6.13 Italy's Freeway Corruption. UNIT 7: ETHICS, OPERATIONS, AND RIGHTS. Section A: Workplace Safety. Reading 7.1 Two Sets of Books on Safety. Case 7.2 Sleeping on the Job and All the Way Home. Case 7.3 CINTAS and OSHA. Case 7.4 Massey Coal Mines, Fatalities, and Indictments. Case 7.5 Bhopal: When Safety Standards Differ. Section B: Workplace loyalty and conflicts. Case 7.6 Aaron Feuerstein and Malden Mills. Case 7. 7 JC Penney and the Wealthy Buyer. Case 7.8 The Trading Desk at Fidelity and "Dwarf" Tossing. Case 7.9 The Analyst Who Needed a Preschool. Case 7.10 Taser and Stunning Behavior. Case 7.11 Boeing and Recruiting the Government Purchasing Agent. Case 7.12 Kodak, the Appraiser, and the Assessor: Lots of Back Scratching. Case 7.13 Medtronics, Journal Articles, Consulting, and Ethics. Case 7.14 Cornell Researchers and Foundation Funding. Section C: Workplace diversity and atmosphere. Case 7.15 English-Only Employer Policies. Case 7.16 Employer Tattoo and Piercing Policies. Case 7.17 On-the-Job Fetal Injuries. Case 7.18 Office Romances. Case 7.19 Employee Screening: Personality, Intelligence, and Disparate Impact. Section D: Workplace privacy and personal lives. Case 7.20 Julie Roehm: The Walmart Ad Exec Who Didn't Fit in Bentonville. Case 7. 21 Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Employer Tracking. Case 7.22 Tweeting, Blogging, Chatting, and E-mailing: Employer Control. Case 7.23 Jack Welch and the Harvard Business Review Editor. Section E: Workplace confrontation. Reading 7.24 The Ethics of Confrontation. Reading 7.25 The Ethics of Performance Evaluations. Case 7.26 Ann Hopkins and Price Waterhouse. Reading 7.27 The Glowing Recommendation. Section F: Workplace and the environment. Case 7.28 Exxon and Alaska. Case 7. Johns-Manville and Asbestos. UNIT 8: ETHICS AND PRODUCTS. Section A: Advertising content. Case 8.1 Skechers and the Muscle-Building Shoes. Case 8.2 POM and the Health Benefits Claims. Case 8.3 Joe Camel: The Cartoon Character Who Knew How to Sell Cigarettes. Case 8.4 Cereal Claims of Health, Better Grades, Immunity, and Sugar Content. Case 8.5 Eminem vs. Audi. Section B: Product Safety. Case 8.6 A Primer on Product Liability. Case 8.7 Peanut Corporation of America: Salmonella and Indicted Leaders. Case 8.8 Tylenol: The Swing in Product Safety. Case 8.9 Merck and Vioxx. Case 8.10 Ford's Pinto, GM's Malibu, and Toyota's Acceleration: Repeating Issues. Case 8.11 E-coli: Jack-in-the-Box and Cooking Temperatures. Case 8.12 Bucky Balls and Safety. Case 8.13 Energy Drinks: Healthy or Risky? Case 8.14 Made in China: Standards and Contracts and Safety. Section C: Product Sales. Case 8.15 Cardinal Health and Oxycodone Sales. Case 8.16 Pfizer, Pharmas, Fines, and Sales Tactics. Case 8.17 The Mess at MarshMcLennan. Case 8.18 Selling Your Own Products for Higher Commissions. Case 8.19 Frozen Coke and Burger King and the Richmond Rigging. Case 8.20 Slotting Fees: Facilitation or Fast Funds? Section D: Products and Social Issues. Case 8.21 The Mommy Doll. Case 8.22 Fast-Food Liability. Case 8.23 Barbie Doesn't Like Math. UNIT 9: ETHICS AND COMPETITION. Section A: Covenants not to compete. Reading 9.1 A Primer on Covenants Not to Compete. Case 9.2 Boeing, Lockheed, and the Documents. Case 9.3 Hilton and Starwood: The Poaching of Employees and Documents. Section B: All's fair, or is it? Reading 9.4 Adam Smith, An Excerpt from The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Case 9.5 Sabotaging Your Employer's Information Lists Before You Leave to Work for a Competitor. Case 9.6 Bad-Mouthing the Competition: Where's the Line? Case 9.7 Online Pricing Differentials and Customer Questions. Case 9.8 Brighton Collectibles: Terminating Distributors for Discounting Prices. Case 9.9 Electronic Books and the Amazon War. Case 9.10 Mattel and the Bratz Doll. Section C: Intellectual property and ethics. Case 9.11 Tiffany vs. Costco and Landlords and Knock-Off Artists. Case 9.12 The Little Intermittent Windshield Wiper and Its Little Investor. Case 9.13 Copyrights and Charitable Use. Cross-Referencing Tools/Indexes. Ethical Common Denominators across Business Topics Index. Alphabetical Index. Business Discipline Index. Product/Company/Individuals/Subject Index. Topic Index.