BBT Tobacco Case Study: Ethical Implications and Decision Models

This assignment presents a case study on Big Business Tobacco (BBT), an Australian tobacco producer, and its expansion into the Asian market. The core issue revolves around the ethical implications of marketing cigarettes in a new market, specifically concerning the inclusion of health warnings on cigarette packs. The case explores the conflict between profit maximization and corporate social responsibility, as the marketing manager, Mary Bender, prioritizes profits over public health concerns, while the public relations manager, Randall Hedges, raises concerns about the potential health impacts and the ethical implications of omitting health warnings. The assignment delves into the ethical decision-making process, highlighting the importance of ethical models like the PLUS model (Policies, Legal, Universal, Self) in navigating complex business decisions. The provided solution outlines the steps involved in ethical decision-making, emphasizing the need to define the problem, consult experts, identify potential solutions, consider regulations, and implement decisions. It highlights the importance of ethical considerations in business, especially in the face of potential health risks and the impact on consumer behavior. The assignment also includes a second part, concerning John's Taxation Services, which requires completing a worksheet, preparing adjusting entries, and preparing financial statements (income statement, statement of changes in equity, and classified balance sheet) based on provided financial data.

Part A
In many ways the ethical issues are considered as a tiny subject to talk upon however when
the ethics is on the basis of the company, the ethical decision models are necessary to
compete with other companies in order to have a competitive advantage. Also putting ethics
as the last option can create the trouble among the organisation. The company needs to
perform ethical practices and the policies to gain the market share and the large base of the
consumer. In order to follow the ethical practices there are certain models that are used by the
company (Bush, 2018).
The ethical decision making model helps the executive to take the decisions and make it a
strategic decision as the decision making is mainly dependent upon the quality of the
decisions and the execution effectiveness. Before a model can be taken into consideration the
leaders need to work upon the various stages to get to the ultimate goal. The focus shall be on
how to bring the comprehensive solution to settle down the ethical disputes and problems.
The firsts step is to take time and define the problem. Under this stage the pre evaluation is
done to understand the areas where there is a need of the ethical model. The duty resides on
the top level management that how they needs to bring the ethical model into practice (Kim,
et al 2018).
The second step is to consult the experts for their expert advice and resources from the public
around them. For example it can be the HR Professionals or the policies or the handbook set
long ago.
The third step is to find out what the problematic areas are and what could be the possible
solutions to deal with such problems. For instance if there is an issue to make understand the
importance of the time and their shifts accordingly the manager can that can not only

motivate the employees but at the same time but also improves the performance of the
business. The reverse case would have the detrimental impact (Dunn and Sainty, 2019).
The fourth step is to consider the regulations and laws set by the court for the industries and
the companies and the company shall abide by those rules and regulations accordingly. The
good lesson to learn from here is that the mistakes can be found out by comparing the
performance against the industry standards and the benchmarks.
The fifth step is to decide on a decision and thereafter implement the decisions to bring the
change in the organisation. The evaluation and the implementation stage is necessary as it
may give the idea to the management on how the decisions are working upon the
performance of the employees as well as the company as a whole and the rectification can be
done according to the environmental changes (Noothigattu, et al 2018).
The biggest example of the ethical decision making model is PLUS model. The name itself
suggest the leaders the usage of the letters for the purpose of the decision making.
The letter P stands for policies and the procedures that showcase that whether the decision is
lined up with the policies and the procedures lay out by the company (Bush, 2018).
The L letter stands for the legal parameters that are to be followed by the company.
The letter U stands for the universal values and the principles adopted by the organisation
and whether they are in alignment with the core values of the culture followed by the
company.
The letter S stands for the self who suggest that does the company meets all the standards
and this purely fair and unbiased in its approach. This particular element best fits with the
virtue of the approach and among the five common benchmarks; this element is the most
crucial one.

References
Bush, S.S., 2018. Ethical decision making in clinical neuropsychology. Oxford University
Press.
Dunn, P. and Sainty, B., 2019. Professionalism in accounting: a five-factor model of ethical
decision-making. Social Responsibility Journal.
Kim, R., Kleiman-Weiner, M., Abeliuk, A., Awad, E., Dsouza, S., Tenenbaum, J. and
Rahwan, I., 2018. A Computational Model of Commonsense Moral Decision Making. arXiv
preprint arXiv:1801.04346.
Noothigattu, R., Gaikwad, S.S., Awad, E., Dsouza, S., Rahwan, I., Ravikumar, P. and
Procaccia, A.D., 2018, April. A voting-based system for ethical decision making. In Thirty-
Second AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.

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