...Desperate Air Managers are constantly faced with ethical dilemmas. The book, Managing Business Ethics: Straight talk how to do it right, defines an ethical dilemma as a situation when two or more “right” values are in conflict (Trevino & Nelson, 2010). A decision can sometimes be legally correct, but it does mean it is always ethically correct. A decision may not always maximize the benefits to society or stakeholders. In the following essay, I will review Dash decision and how the RDCAR approach helps me make a better decision. The case of Desperate Air Corporation (DAC) is a company going through financial difficulties. In hopes to turn the company around the CEO, Benton Williams, wants to sell a large underdeveloped ocean front property on the east coast of Florida (McGraw-Hill). He requests DAC’s Vice President of Real Estate, George Nash, to find a buyer. Nash is able to find a buyer. A developer, Fledgling Industries, wants to turn the land into condominiums, walking trails and recreational facilities (McGraw-Hill). DAC had conducted a full environmental review of the land and found no problems. The buyer and the seller proceeded to negotiate with the sale. During the early stages of negotiations, Dash finds out that the land had toxic waste. Dash confirmed the news by walking over to the site and sees signs of radioactive medical waste. Dash reported his findings to Williams and Williams made it clear to Dash that this sale needs to happen. The state of Florida does...
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...Desperate Air Case In the Desperate Air case, As the Vice President of Real Estate at Desperate Air Corporation, Nash is facing with ethical dilemmas, and there are some moral reasoning about the conflict of personal and business ethics. Nash was told that pending sale of Florida property potentially had toxic waste buried beneath the surface. Thus, should he mention the hazardous materials to the Fledgling representative before he closed the sale? In my opinion, if I was in George Nash’s position, I would proceed with the sale without disclosing the information regarding what I had heard about the toxic waste. Using Deckop’s decision making models, the ethical decision-making may meet three goals: utilitarianism, profit maximization, and universalism. This means that if people use different perspectives, they would make different decisions. Profit maximization is actually a subset of utilitarianism, and the utilitarian is often portrayed figuratively as holding a scale, with the benefits on one side being weighed against the harm on the other. According to the profit maximization point of view, compared to harm, the decision may bring more benefit. In this case, Nash is conflicted between remaining silent and closing the sale immediately. Remaining silent will help his company stay solvent which in turns results in people remaining employed. Nash also have responsibilities to the company and employees. While speaking up and informing Fledgling about the toxic waste could delay...
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...Desperate Air Case Behaving ethically is a decision based on morals and more often than not managers or executives are faced with these difficult decisions that can translate into short or long term profits. Organizations that demonstrate good ethical behavior and strong corporate social responsibility typically yields significant rewards in return. But what happens when an unethical decision is the only way to save your organization from a collapse? That is the case for Desperate Air Corporation's vise president of Real Estate George Nash. Mr. Nash, after doing some soul searching, still decided to close out a deal to sell one of DAC's commercial property to Fledgling Industries even after discovering that the land is exposed with hazardous substances that could prove to be detrimental to the inhabitants of the land. In fact, this is a difficult situation to be in if I was Mr. Nash and an extremely thorny decision to make. I think that i would have to adopt the "RDCAR" paradigm before I make my final decision because it has proven to be a great method to successfully manage ethics in organizations. This five-fold process of recognition (ethical awareness), discovery (ethical fact gathering), cognition (ethical analysis and judgment), action (influencing ethical behavior), and reflection (assessment of ethical outcome) would be used here to examine this specific case. One would have to be very careful in considering the alternative course of actions taken because at what...
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...Desperate Air: What would I do? Management is often faced with ethical dilemmas that have no clear cut correct answer. In our case study, (1)Desperate Air, George Nash, Vice President of Real Estate faces a conflict of values similar to the CEO in Seglin’s article, “How to Make Tough Ethical Calls”. They both want to tell the truth and they want to protect their companies, their investors, their employees, and their own livelihood. Neither Mr. Nash nor the CEO conducted a through examination of the problem they faced. I believe the decision to remain silent made by both Nash and the CEO to be short sighted, based solely on short term profit, and would not have been the route I would have taken. Given the same set of circumstances Nash faced, I would have applied the RDCAR framework discussed in our lecture- acknowledged the problem, assembled information, performed a thorough evaluation of the information and situation, supported an ethical resolution internally and reflected on the results of the outcome before making a recommendation to management. Nash correctly recognized the ethical predicament he was faced. He learned that toxic waste was seeping into the ground of the property that his company needs to sell in order to delay becoming bankrupt. He is conflicted between remaining silent and closing the sale immediately. Remaining silent will help his company stay solvent which in turns results in people (including himself) remaining employed. While speaking...
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...Bithja Laurent MGMT6213 Desperate Air 2/14/16 The hypothetical given in Desperate Air mimics the scenario displayed in the “How to Make Tough Ethical Calls” article written by Jeffrey L. Seglin. In hindsight, the easiest possible answer is to avoid disclosing matters that are non-material. The Florida law does not require disclosure of hazardous substances on commercial property so long as there hasn’t been a fraudulent misstatement about the condition of the property. In retrospect, good ethical practice does considers that if there is the faintest question about whether or not to disclose an issue to potential buyers, avoid the potential for liability and tell all. (NOLO) Generally, a seller is responsible for disclosing only information within his/her personal knowledge. (NOLO) So what is a person to do in this case, where Nash was informed about the toxic waste on the property but was instructed by a DAC lawyer that it is not required to disclose? Let’s first consider the facts before a decision is rendered. As mentioned, the Florida law does not require a disclosure. However, I believe there are different factors at hand that may overrule that law. One factor to consider is conducting negotiations under good faith. This rule requires parties to act honestly. During negotiations, Nash provided Fledgling with a copy of the full environment audit report that was conducted 6 months ago. By providing that document, it demonstrated that Nash began the negations under good...
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...Envir. Ethics 2 Over the years the environment in which we live has suffered immensely. All of our resource systems are in crisis because of our over consumerism, lack of responsibility and lack of knowledge. We use too many resources which is undermining the planets ability for people to live here. Everyone should educate themselves of the state of the environment and some of the everyday changes that each one can do to do our part in saving the planet. We have a moral responsibility to do so for our children and future generations. Although recycling is great (and everyone should be doing it)….what really needs to happen to create a more sustainable society, is for us to reduce the amount of materials that we produce in the first place. There is a pyramid (like the Food Pyramid) (Environmental Science 8th edition, Daniel D. Chiras, 2009, Jones and Bartlett, Publishers Chapter 23 “Hazardous and Solid Wastes: Sustainable Solutions) for solid waste management and it goes like this: Reduction (the top of the pyramid) - not producing materials that generate the waste in the first place. We don’t need all the materials we have. Another good example is packaging waste. Think of how much packaging many of our products come in- lunchables for example, come in a cardboard box and then a sealed plastic tray and then the crackers and other parts are individually wrapped too. Reuse-reusing and repurposing the wastes. Instead of buying brand new why not shop at...
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...incident/investigation report from the Texas Public Information Act, in which was dated July 2011, was included to support the statements regarding the alleged Walmart incident. Florio provides the readers with names involved and a summary of the 2011 incident as well as assures the video will eventually be released to the public. The problem in this situation is the fact Florio is spreading a rumor further to the public, in which claiming a public figure of a crime without reported evidence. The information discussed over the air is just as important as printed media and needs to be carefully evaluated before sharing publicly. As a sportswriter, Florio appears nothing more than an unreliable reporter by spreading of rumors and especially those of an unverified domestic violence incident. This situation is overall unethical and goes against the Society of Professional Journalist Code of Ethics. Florio stated he had no intentions of sharing the rumor over the air, in which he implies the comment arising the topic of discussion was merely an accident. In this situation, Florio most likely was not considering the potential consequences of sharing something he had heard from others through his radio show and he clearly was not thinking from a professional reporter/journalist point-of-view, resulting in being the focus of this unethical dilemma. The post-radio show article published through Pro Football Talk was his attempt to defend his unethical statements by providing the public with...
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...1 The American Red Cross Dr. Jack Huddleston Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making & Case July 21, 2013 2 1. Determine the impact of this event on ARC’s “benefits of business ethics” (employee commitment, investor loyalty, customer satisfaction, and bottom line). The American Red Cross (ARC), also identified as the “The Face of Recovery”, is a humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States. The ARC is a non-profit organization that offers services in five areas of society. The community service sector helps citizens that are in need. In the communication sectors, the ARC provides comfort for military members and their families. The collection, processing and distribution of blood and blood products are also services provided by the ARC. There are also educational services on preparedness, health, and safety which are imperative for recovery acts. Hurricane Katrina was the deadliest and most destructive Atlantic Hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane season. It was the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes. Hurricane Rita hit the coast of Louisiana and Texas only a month later and was even larger category 3 storm (Ferrell, Ferrell, Fraedrich 2011). The ARC raised more than 2 billion in private donations to fund massive relied efforts for both these disasters...
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...mankind. The novella dealt with the changes the boys underwent as they gradually adapted to freedom from their society. William Golding’s expresses his basic philosophy through character and symbols foretells that man was inherently vile expressed in the reference to evilness as “the beast” reminiscing within all humanity, the actions of the boys once relinquished from the restraints of civil ideal assuming barbaric anarchy, and the loss of innocents as the segregation of law and order. Evilness is not an external force but it is an attribute of all humans. To prefer evil to good is not in human nature. When man is compelled to pick, no one will choose the less when he might have the greater. Stuck on the island the boys were met with desperate means, abandoned without adults and constant order. As their true forms prevail savageness is the outcome, destruction is the aftermath. When the boys begin to fear a superstition, they created, called “the beast” it is Simon who realizes that what they should really fear is the beast within themselves. “Fancy thinking the Beast was some you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? Am I part of you? Close, close, close!”(pg. ) The quote debriefs that there is an irrefutable fact of a dormant evil residing in every person even in Simon, the purest of the boys. “the beast” becoming a symbol of evilness protruding in all people as man is not man without it. “Chaos is law of nature; Order is the dream of man.” Quoted by Henry Adams it reflects...
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...PharmaCARE: Ethics and Corporate Responsibility in the Workplace and the World PharmaCARE: Ethics and Corporate Responsibility in the Workplace and the World In any type of business or organization there are ethical issues, conflicts, and successes revolving around relationships. It is those relationships considered one of the key areas of making the business function. The relationships between customers, the employees, managers, supervisors, shareholders, investors and suppliers all shape the course of the business in order for it to be successful. In addition, an organization usually has a governing authority; called a board of directors, which provides oversight and guidance to make sure that the organization keeps focused on objectives in a legal, ethical and socially acceptable manner. Often unethical acts are discovered in organizations; therefore, relationships are not only associated with organizational success but also with organizational misconduct. ("An overview of," 2006) As in the case with PharmaCARE, there were multiple unethical issues due to bad decision making within the company; decisions that affected employees, business partners, and customers. As a result, its stock price plummeted. Stakeholders are those who may be affected by or have an effect on an effort. Most ethical issues exist because of conflicts in values and belief patterns about right and wrong between and within stakeholder groups. There are three types of stakeholders: * Primary stakeholders...
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...Unit 4 Discussion Question Consider a dilemma: You’re the director of a community-based human services organization that includes sites in several towns. A state budget crisis is threatening to reduce your funding by 30%. The head of the state funding agency suggests to you that you simply close down a site. That means both laying off dedicated staff members and denying services to a community and a group of people that has come to rely on you. Perhaps more important, it means deciding among several communities, to all of which you’ve made a commitment. How do you handle the situation? This situation, in my opinion, doesn’t allow for simple solutions. If faced with this dilemma I’d refer to my organizations vision and mission statement in hopes of finding the ethical solutions necessary to handle the task at hand. I’m sure there are ways to create funding to help offset the 30 percent budget cut, but I’d need to do this in a manner that will uphold the organization’s vision and my integrity. Understanding that I have to close a site, I know that people and communities will be hurt no matter what other decisions are made. The questions now becomes, how can I accomplish this and still be fair to each community I serve and have made promises to? I would hope that my ethical standards would be such that I would be able to present solutions that would be fair to all the people. To assure that my organization presented our best efforts, I would establish a team of dedicated...
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...Legal and Ethical Considerations in Marketing, Product Safety, and Intellectual Property Three Ethical Issues When looking at PharmaCARE’s relationship with the Colberians, you see that the company’s treatment of the indigenous population is unethical. In terms of intellectual property, the scenario in Assignment 2 highlights the exploitation of the Colberians. While the indigenous population freely shares their information about their cures, the company exploits them by not compensating them for their shared knowledge. According to labor laws, companies should work ethically and treat all of their employees fair -- not equal, but fair. Some employees, based on their position and level of responsibility, should be paid more and should receive better perks than others. However, the company is earning millions of dollars from the knowledge being shared by the healers, and its executives live in luxury with swimming pools, tennis courts, and a golf course, while the Colberians continue to live in huts without electricity or running water. If the company compensated the healers for their intellectual property, the Colberians could improve their living conditions. PharmaCARE is taking advantage of this group of stakeholders because the healers are uneducated, ignorant to intellectual property laws, and do not know the true value of the information they are sharing with PharmaCARE. According to authors S.C. Jain and R. Bird, the Trade-Related Aspect of Intellectual Property...
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...get air”. The desperate tone is used to illustrate the emotional torment she is experiencing. Similarly, Perkins is able to establish this feeling of loneliness using a long-range shot of the mother sitting on the porch of the house. The shot is able to display the remoteness of the house from everything else and it also symbolizes the emotional isolation that the mother is feeling as the husband can only deal with the matter in a physical way. This is reinforced with a tracking shot of the husband leaving the house through the gate further symbolizing that she is alone in her grief. Both Frost and Perkins have been able to demonstrate the emotional, spiritual and physical discoveries through the death of a child and the differing responses of each person. Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” both provide an insight into the destructive nature of man allowing the audience to experience a confrontational and provocative discovery. Robert Frost’s “Fire an Ice” is a contemplation on how human existence may be eliminated. He uses fire to symbolize the human thirst for power, evidenced through the sensory appeal in “From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favour fire”. The pondering tone also suggests that Frost believes that the emotions of a person could be destroyed by desire. The destructive nature of human desires is evidenced through the character of Colonel Kurtz, who allows his desire to overcome his morals and ethics. The...
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...WRI 102 Argumentative Essay 21st March, 2013 Cloning The twenty first century has brought in many extraordinary breakthroughs one of which happens to be cloning. Cloning can be defined as the process of creating a cell, tissue line or even a complete organism from a single cell (Jane Maienshchein, 2001). Cloning was a mere dream that people in the past used to have and wish upon, where cloning has been seen to be an impossible desire that no man can achieve. However, nowadays technology has reached levels that people thought would never reach and spread into so many branches and depths that now it has become safe to say that nothing is really impossible. Breaking the impossibility, many questions are being asked and many arguments are taking place around human cloning. Cloning has been considered to not just human beings but to animals as well. When the sheep dolly was cloned, the issue of cloning became something familiar to read about in the news. Many headlines have helped the public consider about taking part in this serious issue that is human cloning. Questions start to rise regarding the possibility of human cloning, and of course technology, they are questions that never stop. What has started out as thoughts and ideas about human cloning written down on papers, are now ideas that are being turned in to live experiments preformed in the labs. Away from the different views of the religious organizations and people’s thoughts and disagreement, cloning can be considered...
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...established in 1972 by former University of Oregon track star Phil Knight. Nike has $10 billion in annual revenues and sells its products in 140 countries. Nike has been dogged for more than a decade by repeated accusations that its products are made in sweatshops where workers, many of them children, slave away in hazardous conditions for less than subsistence wages. Many reporters, TV shows, companies and organizations have repeatedly exposed negative comments towards Nike. For example, a “48 Hours” news report aired on October 17, 1996 regarding a Nike factory in Vietnam, which was visited by reporter Roberta Baskin. The reporter discovered that Nike hired millions of workers who are literate, disciplined, and desperate for jobs at wages lower than minimum wage. Another example of the criticism against Nike came from a newsletter published by Global Exchange. The newsletter uncovered that the majority of Nike shoes were made in Indonesia and China, countries with governments that prohibit independent unions and set the minimum wage at rock bottom. Nike formulated a number of strategies and tactics to deal with the problems of working conditions and pay in subcontractors. In early 1997, Nike also began to commission independent organizations such as Ernst & Young to audit the factories of its subcontractors. Finally, on May 12, 1998 Nike founder Phil Knight spelled out a series of initiatives designed to improve working...
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