Sorting It Out: Identifying and Addressing Conflicts and Business Ethics in Global Value Networks

Global value networks are often large, complex, and opaque. Understanding the relationships among stakeholders involved in these networks or organizations can be challenging. This card sort task provides an interactive way to engage participants in questioning the roles of stakeholders who are involved in a business ethics dilemma or an organizational product failure. This card sort task and discussion activity encourages participants to recognize that stakeholders may hold different knowledge, responsibility, or power; identify competing, conflicting, or complementary interests across stakeholders; articulate logical arguments; and engage in debate, compromise, and critical evaluation. This technique has been used successfully with undergraduate and postgraduate business, management, and social science students and is suitable for in-person and remote classes.

Incorporating Stakeholder Perspectives on Scarce Resource Allocation: Lessons Learned from Policymaking in a Time of Crisis

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis provoked an organizational ethics dilemma: how to develop ethical pandemic policy while upholding our organizational mission to deliver relationship- and patient-centered care. Tasked with producing a recommendation about whether healthcare workers and essential personnel should receive priority access to limited medical resources during the pandemic, the bioethics department and survey and interview methodologists at our institution implemented a deliberative approach that included the perspectives of healthcare professionals and patient stakeholders in the policy development process. Involving the community more, not less, during a crisis required balancing the need to act quickly to garner stakeholder perspectives, uncertainty about the extent and duration of the pandemic, and disagreement among ethicists about the most ethically supportable way to allocate scarce resources. This article explains the process undertaken to garner stakeholder input as it relates to organizational ethics, recounts the stakeholder perspectives shared and how they informed the triage policy developed, and offers suggestions for how other organizations may integrate stakeholder involvement in ethical decision-making as well as directions for future research and public health work.

Cost of Human Life

How do you value human life? Is there a price too high to save the life of another? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, Donald is testing new AI software that will run the entire railroad system of the future. It has one final test to pass, the classic ethics dilemma, The Trolley Problem; does it pull the lever and kill one, or do nothing and allow five to die? This should be an easy solution for an unemotional machine. However, the AI decides to do nothing, and allows the five in the simulation to die. When Donald checks its programming, he finds the program has determined, after taking into account lawsuits, delayed passenger complaints, and lost revenue, that doing nothing is the more economically valuable choice. Donald is left with the problem of if, and how, to program the AI on decisions related to value human life.

Animal Ethical Views and Perception of Animal Pain in Veterinary Students

Veterinary students face several ethical challenges during their curriculum. We used the Animal Ethics Dilemma to study animal ethical views of Finnish veterinary students, and also asked them to score the level of pain perception in 13 different species. Based on the 218 respondents, the utilitarian view was the dominating ethical view. Mammals were given higher pain scores than other animals. The proportion of the respect for nature view correlated negatively, and that of the animal rights view positively, with most animal pain scores. Fifth year students had a higher percentage of contractarian views, as compared to 1st and 3rd year students, but this might have been confounded by their age. Several pain perception scores increased with increasing study years. We conclude that the utilitarian view was clearly dominating, and that ethical views differed only slightly between students at different stages of their studies. Higher pain perception scores in students at a later stage of their studies might reflect an increased knowledge of animal capacities.

“Walking the environmental responsibility talk” in the automobile industry

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the corporate behavior of Volkswagen in its emissions scandal. It describes and analyzes a complex ethics dilemma within the purview of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate sustainability (CS) and examines how this dilemma impacts critical stakeholders, thus offering several “opportunities to learn” for professionals. Design/methodology/approach The case takes a stakeholder perspective, applying Cavanagh et al. (1981) and Gao’s (2008) ethical judgement framework. It is situated within a qualitative approach to textual analysis. Social actors, topics and evaluative statements were identified and grouped into broader categories. Findings Six major stakeholders were directly affected by Volkswagen’s behavior: customers, investors and shareholders, the US Environmental Protection Agency, German authorities, European institutions and society-at-large. Stakeholder concerns were condensed into three dominant themes: economic, legal and environmental. According to the ethical judgment framework, Volkswagen corporate behavior showed ethical problems, theoretically demonstrating that under no ethical principle was Volkswagen’s actions justifiable, even under instrumental justifications. Research limitations/implications The analysis was primarily based on corporate material and news media reporting. Consequently, diverse managers’ prospectives and opinions are not entirely captured. Practical implications This paper offers several “opportunities to learn” for corporate communication professionals. Originality/value The focus on stakeholder perspectives allows professionals to take an outside-in approach when evaluating the impact of corporate actions on stakeholders’ interests. The case analysis through Cavanagh et al. (1981) and Gao’s (2008) ethical judgment framework provides a practical theoretical instrument to assess corporate behaviors that can be used both as pre- and post-evaluations of corporate actions on CSR and CS issues.

The Trolley Problem Version of Autonomous Vehicles

Introduction:The Trolley problem is a very well-known ethics dilemma about actively killing one or sometimes even more persons in order to save a number of persons. The problem can occur in autonomous vehicles when the vehicle realizes that there is no way to prevent a collision, the computer of the vehicle should analyze which collision is considered to be the least harmful collision.Method and Result:In this paper, we suggest a method to evaluate the likely harmfulness of each sort of collision using Spatial Data Structures and Bounding Volumes and accordingly to decide which course of actions would be the less harmful and therefore should be chosen by the autonomous vehicle.Conclusion:The aim of this paper is to emphasize that the “Trolley Problem” occurs when the human driver is replaced by a robot and if a moral answer is given by an authoritative and legitimate board of experts, it can be coded in autonomous vehicle software.

Damages Subject to Compensation in Cases of Wrongful Birth: A Solution to Suit Estonia

In cases of wrongful birth, parents seek compensation for any damage related to birth of a disabled child. The claim is made against the health-care provider for negligent failure to detect foetal defects, which has as a consequence loss of the opportunity of the parents to decide to terminate the pregnancy in a timely manner. Case law on this topic is absent in Estonia. Accordingly, the article proposes a reasoned solution for Estonian law on the question of recoverable damages in cases of wrongful birth through analysis of Estonian, German, and United States legal literature and case law. The grounds for the health-care provider’s liability under the Estonian Law of Obligations Act are analysed. The main focus is on analysis of compensation for the disabled child’s maintenance costs and non-pecuniary damage. Among other factors, the article examines the ethics dilemma of avoiding the birth of a disabled child, limits to compensation, and the extent of the damages due.