Nature of Ethical Issues and Significance of Business in Society

ENTREPRENEURSHIP
DEVELOPMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
PART 1............................................................................................................................................3
Nature of the ethical issues and significance of business in society............................................3
Determination of key stakeholder................................................................................................4
Advise & Recommendation.........................................................................................................6
B) Two ethical theories................................................................................................................7
PART 2............................................................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Ethics are referred to the moral philosophy or codes of principles that are practiced by
individuals or group of individuals. it is practices by organization to build trust of the customer,
employees and other business partners on the company’s product and it’s policies. The brief
study provides understanding about the nature of ethical and role of the business in society
through Johnson & Johnson case study.
PART 1
Nature of the ethical issues and significance of business in society
Johnson & Johnson is an American multinational corporation which is headquartered in
new jersey, US. It was founded in 1886 which manufactures medical devices, pharmaceutical
and consumer packaged products around the world. company maintains a tradition of quality
and innovation of the products. Past few years company faces numerous ethical issues that
impacts on it’s productivity, operation and performance (Boiral and et.al., 2019). the ethical
dilemma for the organization is that company manufactures large quantity of the painkillers and
exports around the world to the public. In the case study of the Johnson & Johnson finds out that
organization have to pay huge penalty in Oklahoma this case happened in last years (Johnson &
Johnson to pay $572m for fueling Oklahoma opioid crisis, judge rules, 2019). The judge of the
Oklahoma ordered company to pay huge fine due to dealing with an opioid addiction crisis.
According to the Oklahoma’s government, company is responsible for opioid crisis as result gets
high ratio of death as well as addiction of the opioid on large scale in the youngsters. Even US
government accuses that estimates 1.7 million individuals are suffered from the substance
because they use it for the disorders that relates to prescription of the opioid pain relivers. While
lawyer of the Johnsons & Johansson proves that paracetamol is the main substance of the opioid
which use to relieve pain and does not produce any type of addiction (Ciulla, 2018). In addition,
organization stated that this substance use for treating number of chronic disease but does not
product any type drug abuse symptoms. Overall factors are considered by the government but
claimed that it provokes doctors to buy its products i.e. opioid drugs in high quantity through
marketing strategy or campaign. It is the main ethical dilemma that causes government unable to

take ethical decision effectively. There are various challenges that are recognised by senior
manager in the perspective of the company such as honesty, integrity, identification conflicts of
the interest and its impact on the stakeholder groups. Honesty is the major element of the ethical
thinking that helps an organization to portray brand image in the customer’s mind. Whereas
Johnson & Johnson builds trust of the customer on the organization and its pharmaceutical
products through questionable marketing campaign. But it is accused by government as a part of
opioid addiction crisis so it is considered in ethical dimension. In other word, the ethical issues
prove that company takes unethical practice to gain high profit that causes epidemic situation
occurs in the Oklahoma (Dentchev, Haezendonck and van Balen, 2017).
Business’s role in society
According to the manager perspectives, the main role of the business is to produce and
supply goods and services to fulfil public needs and expectation. whereas Corporate Social
responsibility (CSR) is a business practice that supports company to product such kind product
or goods which gives positive impact on the society. There is another way that company’s affects
society such as creates opportunities and influence innovations. To build trust of the society
applies CSR practices in it’s business such as product awareness campaign and others.
Organization also expects to maintain specific level of responsibility in the way whereas it
executes it’s operation. Johnson & Johnson also plays essential role in the society such as it
manufactures pharmaceutical products, medical items and others and distributes numerous
countries of the world. it manufactures painkillers so that can stay away society from the pain.
Generally, company play central role in the society because it has huge production of the
painkiller i.e. Tramadol, oxycodone, meperidine and paracetamol etc. In addition, company
practices corporate social responsibility so that can gain trust of the society on the organization
(Dierksmeier and Seele, 2018). Organization applies different marketing campaign strategy i.e.
pain relief champion for the cancer patients, drugs awareness campaign and opioid’s marketing
strategy etc. to build trust of doctors and public on it’s products. Thus, company plays central
role in the society which denotes that it does not have mean to generate high profit only. It
supports society or patients to live life pain free.