Business and Utilitarian Ethics - Essay Example

She did not only discuss it with David but also went a step further by discussing this with Angela. She cared about the safety of the environment and did her bit to change things for the better. By doing any more, she might lose her job. She should have gone for robust action against the company had she at least been sure that the practice of dumping the hospital waste in the landfill is potentially dangerous for the community. She is told that it is harmless and owing to her lack of knowledge, she doubts that the hospital management is right in saying so. She cannot jeopardize her job on the basis of a doubt! Let’s analyze the matter with the utilitarian theory of ethics. The utilitarian theory of ethics says that any action whose consequences are good is justified. By reporting the company’s matter to her friend, Deborah would never be able to achieve a favorable result. Everybody in the management would suspect her to have leaked out the news and would take severe action against her in addition to firing her from the job. Besides, if she tells her friend, it would create a bad image of the hospital in the public eye. Hence, by leaking out this information, Deborah would never be able to do the ultimate good. She might suspect that this would at least save the life of the community, but she needs scientific knowledge to be sure enough! So the utilitarian theory of ethics suggests that Deborah should drop her plans of leaking this information.

The reasonable limit of loyalty to one’s employer is the very state of doubt that Deborah is in. “…acts should be classified as morally right or wrong only if the consequences are of such significance that a person would wish to see the agent compelled, not merely persuaded and exhorted, to act in a preferred manner” (“Utilitarian ethics”). Once she is sure that the hospital’s waste dumping act has lethal implications for the environment, she may break her loyalty to the hospital. By doing so, she may jeopardize her job, but this world is about much more than just earning money. She would sacrifice her job this way but will be rewarded for her noble act and sacrifice by God Almighty.

Certainly, things would have been different had Deborah been in a position of greater authority. A potential reason why the managers are not taking her seriously is the fact that she is nothing more than a clerk. Had Deborah been in a position to make the decisions, she would have never allowed the dumping of waste in the landfill. Even if she had not been in the decision-making position, her verdict would have been taken seriously by the management and they would probably have done something about that.