BMGT 496 Business Ethics Midterm Assignment, Spring I 2020, Solutions

This document provides comprehensive solutions to a business ethics midterm assignment, addressing key concepts and ethical dilemmas. The assignment explores the ethics of advertising, analyzing the ethical implications of misleading or immoral advertisements, exemplified by a Hanitizer advertisement. It then delves into business ethics and social responsibility, using the example of Na Hui Kope to illustrate ethical sourcing and fair practices. The assignment further examines the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through the lens of Kant's philosophy, highlighting its application of universal principles and the formula of humanity. The trolley problem is analyzed, examining the complexities of moral decision-making and the impact of different approaches. Finally, the document discusses Adam Smith's concept of self-interest in relation to business ethics, considering its implications for manufacturers, consumers, and society. References are included using the APA system. The document is designed to provide a detailed understanding of business ethics principles and their practical applications.

Running head: ETHICS AND MORALS
ETHICS AND MORALS
Name of the Student
BMGT 469
Student’s Email ID
Date of Submission

ETHICS AND MORALS
Answer 1
According to Snyder, (2016) advertisements are not ethical due to numerous reasons. The
main reasons why an advertisement is not ethical is when the company in an advertisement
tries to demean the product of the competitor, when an advertisement provides information
that is misleading and false or does not give information that is relevant or when the
advertisement is immoral.
In the advertisement for Hanitizer the brand mentions how the sanitizer is effective and useful
for the customers. The advertisement is ethical as it does not degrade the product of the
competitors, or mentions any information that is false, misleading, or not relevant. The
advertisement does not even play with the emotions of the people or hide any facts that are
relevant to the consumers. The advertisement does not manipulate the consumers into buying
the product by tapping into their emotions, it just provides the consumers with the facts of the
product and how it can be beneficial to the consumers when used (Singh, 2014). The moral
and ethics of the advertisement cannot be questioned, as it does not use any variety of sex
appeal for people to be attracted to buy the products and neither is the advertisement target at
kids to appeal them into buying the product.
Answer 2
Business ethics can be defined as the set of values and morals that a company has which
guides them in making decisions and how they should behave in the society. The company is
socially responsible and uses ethical means to procure their coffee beans. The social approach
to business ethics can be used to describe the supply chain the company is using. This
approach can be described as making decisions that are in favour of the society in general and
not the company in specific (Setó-Pamies & Papaoikonomou, 2016). Na Hui Kope follows its
social responsibility as it provides jobs to the small farmers who grow coffee rather than
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ETHICS AND MORALS
importing the coffee from Indonesia, even if it would have been cheaper. The company is fair
as it does not take advantage of the small local farmers, however supports them. They have
concern for others as they provide the local farmers with job opportunities and since they
source their coffee from local farmers a green farming can also be seen by practicing by the
company. Though the basic goal of every company is to earn revenue, Na Hui Kope instead
of thinking about their profit margins uses the opportunity to uplift the local farmers of Kona,
where they have established there company (Hartman, DesJardins & MacDonald, 2014).
Answer 3
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a document that was declared by the United
Nations in the year 1948. The main purpose of the document was to serve as a standard for all
the people and the nations that has to be followed. Through this document it is the first time
that the basic human rights of the people has been protected (Danieli, Stamatopoulou & Dias,
2018).
Kant regarded morality as a theory that should be practised by all the people, regardless to the
religion that one follows. According to him, religion has no part in a person being moral as
not everyone can derive the same answer of morality by looking at religion, morality is
constant. Kant called morality as categorical imperatives that must be followed without
thinking about desires and are derived from reasons that are pure. He formulised the
imperatives into two parts, the universalizability principle which states that one should act
only according the principle that can be universally applied without a contradiction and the
second is the formula of humanity which states that the one should not use other people as
means to achieve something (Aune, 2014).
Kant’s philosophy can be seen applied in the UDHR as the articles in it state that all humans
are free and have their own choices. It is a principle that does not discriminate based on any
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differences. The formula of humanity can be seen mostly applied in the UDHR as the
document treats people equally and sets a guideline for nations and people to treat each other
as individuals and people who have free choices rather than people who can be used as mere
means to achieve a goal (Moyn, 2014). The universality principle also applies in UDHR as if
one person is doing something and it cannot be applied universally, or applying it universally
creates a contradiction the action that is being done is not moral. The UDHR as is a document
for moral rights it can be seen that it does not discriminate between people and considers
everyone equal and the rules and laws apply to all like the universalization principle of Kant.
Answer 4
The trolley problem is problem that states if moral decisions are about the results or the way
in which the decision is achieved. The two problems that are deliberated are if there is train
headed towards five workers and there is not manner in which they can be informed about it,
and the only way to save their lives is to pull a lever that changes the direction of the train,
however kills one worker that is on the other track. The second problem is the train can be
stopped by pushing a huge person in front of it to save the lives of the five people. This
problem compels individual to think about what they would do when both the options do not
produce favourable outcomes (Trolley Problem, 2014).
Many people have inconsistent because they think that switching the lever is not a direct
manner in which they kill a person to save the lives of five people and can be morally
justified as having a larger utilitarian outcome, however in the second problem one is pushing
the person off the bridge and though the outcome is the same from the previous problem the
manner in which the task is done is different (Greene, 2016). The manner in which the
outcome is generated is important for people when choosing the option of killing a person to
save the lives of five people.
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Answer 5
In the statement by Adam Smith he mentions that a person if has chance to earn profit by
manufacturing a product or by providing a service the person will do it. The selling of the
goods and the service scan be seen as a need in the society which can be met by the self-
interest of earning money by an individual (Smith, 1937). In this the self-interest of the
manufacturer and the service provider are taken into the considerations and how they are
fulfilled by the needs and wants in the society.
In today’s era, business ethics are to be followed by the business for their working. Smith’s
theory of self-interest of the manufacturers and the suppliers can be seen as selfish and self-
indulging (Werhane, 2019). The business ethics state that every action and decision that is
done and made should be ethically and morally correct to benefit the manufacturer, the
stakeholders, consumers and the society. When the people are considered as selfish and self-
indulging, the question of morality and ethics come into action and the business can be seen
as exploiting the needs of the consumers for their own profit.
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References
Aune, B. (2014). Kant's theory of morals. Princeton University Press.
Danieli, Y., Stamatopoulou, E., & Dias, C. (2018). The universal declaration of human rights:
Fifty years and beyond. Routledge.
Greene, J. (2016). Solving the trolley problem. A companion to experimental philosophy,
175-178.
Hartman, L. P., DesJardins, J. R., & MacDonald, C. (2014). Business ethics: Decision
making for personal integrity and social responsibility. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Moyn, S. (2014). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 in the history of
cosmopolitanism. Critical Inquiry, 40(4), 365-384.
Setó-Pamies, D., & Papaoikonomou, E. (2016). A multi-level perspective for the integration
of ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability (ECSRS) in management
education. Journal of Business Ethics, 136(3), 523-538.
Singh, M. (2014). Ethical Issues and Principles Related To Advertising. Abhinav-National
Monthly Refereed Journal of Research In Commerce & Management (Online ISSN
2277-1166), 3(6), 100-108.
Smith, A. (1937). The wealth of nations [1776].
Snyder, W. (2016). Ethics in Advertising: Making the case for doing the right thing.
Routledge.
Trolley Problem. (2014). Trolley Problem. Retrieved 13 February 2020, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOpf6KcWYyw
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Werhane, P. H. (2019). The role of self-interest in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations.
In Systems Thinking and Moral Imagination (pp. 271-280). Springer, Cham.
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