Case Study 1 1.) Which of the obstacles to moral behavior do you see at work: In Aaron Beams behavior and thinking? Lying to other people by the manner of creating false contents inside the details of the financial reports. Not following the law by covering up lost money by entering fictitious revenue entries to fill in the gaps of what was missing. In Scrushys behavior and thinking? Condoning fraudulent behavior as well as law breaking by putting a great amount of pressure on Beam by forcing him to do whatever he could to make the financial reports look better than they actually were. 2.) Explain how Aaron Beam might have used the loyal agents argument to defend his actions. The loyal agents argument states that a managers most important obligation is loyalty to the company regardless of ethics. Laws and Moral are different things. Do you think that Aaron Beams situation the loyal agents argument might have been valid? I do not think that Aaron Beam was protected in the loyal agents argument. Explain? He stated that he felt what he was doing was right and called it aggressive accounting. However when he said that he thought it was justified within bounds of the accounting rules. He in fact knew that was incorrect. What he was choosing to do involved a serious of wrongs and it was based on impartial consideration. He was not taking into consideration what would happen years down the road when he was way too far ahead of himself. I am also certain he did not believe it would end in him retiring, being sentenced, and starting a lawn business. 3.) In terms of Kohlbergs views on moral development, at what stage of moral development would you place Aaron Beam? Level Two Conventional. Explain? It was wrong to choose to continuously move cost from expenses to investments altering funds and in the end he left assuming that eventually improved after all that had happened. He knew what was morally right but he said he felt pressured and awed by Richard Scrushy so he stayed loyal to him. He decide to look at the terms of what was right and wrong through someone elses eyes instead of his own taking on the point of view of Richards and disregarding his own. At what stage would you place Richard Scrushy? Level One Preconventional. Even though the company was doing reasonably well he ignored what was right and requested what was wrong out of another. He was not looking at what his choice of action would do. His actions where self-centered. Case study 2 1.) Utilitarianism might provide a defense for Roche because they believed for China their actions where correct and gave them hope in providing a medicine that would help many peoples lives by preventing post-transplant organ rejection and that it reduced suffering by saving thousands of patients lives. Rights based ethics which was the most powerful and persuasive approach is on the opposite end of the spectrum may however condemn Roches drug trials in China by saying that the negative out ways the positive rights in this situation because even though the subjects that were having their organs taken where prisoners they were still human beings and it is not ethical to take organs from them by tricking or against their will of even willingly for that matter. 2.) I do not believe it is ethical for Roche to continue testing cellcept on its Chinese transplant patients. Roche used prisoners organs and took them both with and without their consent. Roche was responsible for deaths caused in order to take organs to test cell-cept on people who are receiving organs and it is neither the right nor the moral thing to do in almost any society. I believe there is good that comes from lifesaving medicine but in this instance there just needs to be a more ethical way of testing the cell-cept products. Case Study 3 1.) How would Locke, Smith, and Marx evaluate the various events in this case? Locke would handle the case in such a way of stating it was unfair that GM was being favored in being granted the bailout loans that they obtained. They should have been held responsible for their own decision making to not sell the hybrid cars and only SUV's and they lend themselves to their own downfall. With no equity and justice system they have to take ownership of making poor decisions that led them to lose their rights to their company going bankrupt. Utilitarian argument of free market and private and private property smith would disagree with the governments involvement when bush stepped in to help and would say that it was diminishing the welfare of the people. In a believe system that with low prices little resources are used up and are misled by public welfare. He would argue that the workers at GM had no clue what they were working towards and didnt know what would happen in their own futures. They were somewhat blindly being led. The urge to want to sell what was popular at the time the SUV was viewed as a good idea and serving societys needs let to their downfall competition led them. Mark free marked and free trade exploited the effects cause by industry. In Marx opinion it would be perfectly fine and justifiable that GM ended up in the governments hands and was turned into the General Motors Company. The small 10% that the old GM received would be justified and the 17% that was sent to the retiree and health benefits would be considered reasonable. The 61% that became government owned would also be ok. He would state this was a symptom of inequality caused by capitalism. Although the workers after a lifetime of commitment to GM became poor and were left with next to nothing it is just a part of capitalism. They were controlled by someone else from the day they signed on to be a part of GM. Even the owner who was the other side of the workers ended up losing his job and walking away from GM in the end result. 2.) Explain the ideologies implied by the statements of the letter to the U.S. Congress signed by 100 leading economists, Joseph Stiglitz, Bob Corker, the Republican solution on the bailouts, Robert Higgs, and Michael Winther. Senator Bob Corker thought this created a huge message about free enterprise. There were moving free market economy in the wrong direction and heading to fast market economy in the wrong direction and heading towards socialism. Joseph Stiglitz said the evstate capitalism socializes losses privatized profits and its doomed to failure. Robert Higgs thought the government is resorting to outright socialism by taking on the positions in these rescued firms. Michael Winther says there are two systems free market and socialism the bailout could be considered a super socialism since it has every possible component of socialism. The federal government isnt content to regulate it wants to own private companies. 3.) In your view should the GM bailouts have been done? Explain why or why not. Was the bailout ethical in terms of utilitarianism, justice, rights, and caring? I do not believe GM bail outs should have taken place. The companys made these poor decisions and they should have had to deal with it on their own terms regardless of the ever changing economy. I believe the bailout was ethically right because the workers had to have some recovery from the damage that was done to GM. I also believe however that it was the true and caring way to do what was right for the employees regardless of the poor management and their choices. I do not think the employees were thought about enough when coming to these critical decisions and how their lives and retirements would be affected by the decisions being made. I think that care was put into it but the outcome didnt show care in a positive way. I also do not believe that the ones that were employees by GM had much justice in the end because they were the ones that were left high and dry. Case Study 4 1.) In your judgment is Intel a monopoly? Did Intel use monopoly like power; in other words, did Intel achieve its objectives by relying on power that it had due to its control of a large portion of the market? Explain: Yes Intel acted as a monopoly and used their power to manipulate the situation on every level. Intel got mad that AMD could legally make an x 86 microprocessor. Intel created Itanium in hopes of taking over the entire market and it required an emulation program that could imitate the x 86 microprocessor. This caused old software and data to not work well. AMDs new processor Athlon world great, it also used less electricity, and it cost less than Itanium. In the year 2004 Athlon virtually became just a part of history. Intel used its monopoly of power to pay Japanese companies in rebates to keep them from buying AMDS products and thats only when Intel would pay them. AMD claimed Intel made threats to stop supplying. Intel replied with said AMD chips didnt run fast with large amounts of microchips and that they had lousy parts. Some people defended Intels rebates but AMD began to raise awareness into investigating them. Intel ended up being in violation of antitrust laws. FTC fount out further that Intel had changed its compliers and codes causing them to not work well on AMDs processors and inserted bugs to trip up programs on AMD microchips. Intel met with Dell and increased its financial offer but after many years of being loyal to Intel, Dell finally changed its mind, and made the choice to no longer be loyal to Intel. Intel also bullied HP and IBM but they unlike Dell dint take the bait. Without going to court Intel agreed to settle and could no longer withhold benefits from computer makers. I think Intel achieved its objectives by relying on power it had form its control of Dell. 2.) In your judgment, were Intels rebates ethical or unethical? Explain: In my judgment they were unethical even though it seemed logical to be able to control their own corporation and business affairs the company was not running an ethical business. Intel continuously tried to bully other companies three of which it talked about. Intel also installed malicious software to intentionally hurt their competitors AMD. The rebates were more viewed as a type of bribe to me. I do not think what they did was at all ethically justified and I did not agree with multiple things that they decided to do as a company.