The Concept of Business Ethics - Essay Example

The concept of business ethics and examine its relevance when considering business objectives and responsibilities. Explain how business objectives are affected by ethical considerations Pfizer is an American multinational company. It manufactures vaccines, medicines for a vast range of diseases. It is the largest pharmaceutical company of the world in terms of revenue. Pfizer’s objectives is to improve the quality of life by giving assurance in the supply of high quality Pfizer’s product for human and animals. The company objected to satisfy its customers all the time by performing best in safety & health performance in the specific industry, it wants to bring new product in the marker to beat the competition (Adams 40-41). Another main objective of the company is to make a continuous improvement in the production cost of its products. The company wants to make itself an integrated global organisation. But for its business growth & achieving its objectives the company took some major wrong steps which involved the company into a scandal in1996. This affected the ethical issues of the company also. Pfizer introduced a drug named Trovan. At that time a large outbreak was spread in Nigeria and the company tested the drug on infected children under hasty concision. The company did not inform their parents about the experimental drugs. The adverse effect of this drug killed fifty children & disabled many children. This action affected the ethical issues of the company like individualism, Kantianism, utilitarianism. The company disobeyed the government laws & ethical standards to maximize its profit. Pfizer only considered its business growth without focusing on its customer happiness. The goodwill of the company was hampered as it only focused on money making and ignored the value of people life. The company neither executed the trial for good cause nor did it create happiness. Without evaluation the problems associated with the results of the trial Pfizer implemented it and ended with lawsuits. Pfizer did not respect its customers and took irrational actions (Altier 64-67). The company behaved in an inhuman way with the Nigerians and produced fake letter. As a results of this ethical issues Pfizer was deceitful to the US as the company did not informed the country about this incident for a long time. The company showed its coward nature by not admitting the facts that unethical standard was followed during the time of its medicine testing. It did not consider about the correct ethical guideline which should be followed. This is how the business objectives of Pfizer affected the ethical considerations (Baier 88-89). Evaluate the implications for a business and its stakeholders to operate ethically A person who invests in the company is known as stakeholder. They contribute a lot in attaining success of the business (Balaguer 23-24). The stakeholders of Pfizer hold a strong power in the company. Pfizer’s most of the stakeholders are its business partners, suppliers, investors, customers, patients etc. This company’s stakeholder’s requirement is to increase the value of Pfizer, introduce innovative & new therapies to increase growth in healthcare industry. The stakeholders also allocated the required resources by doing proper investments for generating long term results (Collins and Porras 44-45). Their interest is to improve the drug sales and the debt situation on the company. The present policy of Pfizer creates low dividend but arises interest in its stakeholders by merging the repurchase & dividend which help in receiving 10%. The company tries to increase the layout of the dividend for keeping the future interest of the stakeholders. This thing helps to satisfy the ethical issues of the stakeholders (Darwall 67-69). For their satisfaction Pfizer makes attempts to take different steps for improving the company’s image. The stakeholders take many proactive measures in balancing the negative sale of the company. For the employee the stakeholders introduce transport facilities (De Wijze 39-35). For animal right group they focus on the reduction of the usage of animals for drug testing. This ethical issue help to built humanity and responsibility in them. They make Pfizer to follow the laws and policies of the government for using animals (Donald 101-103). Therefore the stakeholders contribute in maintaining the ethical rights of animals. For operating ethical standard Pfizer started health awareness program along with the recognition of health and science. This program is driven towards education expertise. The stakeholders also influence Pfizer for maintaining partnership with the people & organisations who are actively involved in the areas of healthcare (Double 22-25). The company also increase public awareness for different types of disease. This campaign aims to highlight the risk and the symptom of the disease. Under the influence of the shareholder Pfizer organises events for them for building relationship with communities and customers (Dworkin 77-79). Assess the role of the company acting as a moral agent Pfizer is having a negative role in the context of moral agent. The company have faced many scandals in the recent years. It is also responsible for taking more than fifty lives and disabling several people for testing its products. The company was a failure in its takeover of AstraZeneca, a British company for the reason of its recent scandal of animal testing, bribery issues, testing medicine on children (Ekstrom 63-65). Pfizer have not taken any ethical considerations for maintaining its corporate social responsibilities & ethical standard. That is why the company is not able to maintain its sustainability to achieve good reputation and public image. Pfizer only focuses on its objective of generating profit which creates a huge negative impact on its role of moral agent (Feldman 92-93). Presently to improve the company image and reputation Pfizer is doing donations. It agreed to provide drugs to AIDS patient of South Africa affected by crypotococcal meningitis. This activity shows that the firm has become aware of it losses which aroused for diverting itself from the duties & role of moral agents. For gaining the trust of its customer Pfizer have to perform its strong moral duties for regaining its place (Fishburn 81-86). Research a current ethical issue affecting a selected business There are some current ethical issues of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. In 2009 the company was fined $2.3 billion by the US Government for the illegal promotion of drugs. Those drugs were not granted by medical board and medical regulators (Frey 53-54). The company was also involved in the largest fraud settlement of healthcare in the history of pharmaceutical company. Pfizer also misbranded its drugs with the intension of misleading and defrauding. In government health care program it also had sent false claim which had the instruction to use in situation which did not have any warranty of the drug (Gaus 44-45). The company also got involved in the ethical issues of bribing doctors and influence them to prescribe their drugs by treating them well. The company lied about their drugs and its uses. It also denied the fact of bribing doctors and influencing them. The company also promoted unsafe use of its products and dosages. In an ethical sense Pfizer failed its stakeholders for the issue of willpower and motivation (Gauthier 49-55). For all this ethical issues the Pfizer is losing its trust from people. This resulted in a loss of potential sales of the company. Many of their drugs are still not sold. Pfizer is losing its potential and targeted customer for its bad reputation which was created for not following the ethical standards and ethical issues of the industry. The marketing and advertising activities of the company are also suffering a loss (Fisher and Lovell 96). People are not interested in their marketing campaign as they have a negative perception about the company. The current ethical issue of mis-commitment by promoting wrong and unsafe drugs just to increase its revenue affected the business in the ethical grounds. Medicine helps the in curing diseases and saves life. But Pfizer is only using its medicines to generate their revenue. The company is not much concerned about its customer’s health. It is mainly concerned about its product sales (Griffm, James 31-35). Report on how the business could improve the ethics of their operations whilst meeting objectives and ensuring good employer/employee relationships. Pfizer need to improve its ethics for their business operation and meeting the company objectives. Pfizer have to develop a strong method of clinical research for evaluating the risk & benefit of its different approaches. The company need to follow the research protocols. It has to keep a committee of experts maintaining the international & local standard. Before implementing any trial medicine Pfizer needs to take permission from the government. It use understand the value of life of human as well as animals before experimenting with them. This will improve the sense of responsibility of Pfizer (Hans 28-33). The company have to focus on their main motive of curing people & animals by their medicines. Pfizer have to stop bribing the doctors for promoting and selling its medicine. Rather it should focus on helping and benefiting the people by its drugs. The Stakeholders of Pfizer should understand the social duties of the company and influence Pfizer to act accordingly (Crane and Matten 72). They can also initiate strong engagement program for employee & employer which will help the company to motivate its employee for achieving their business objectives (Haslett 51-57). For some scandals & its many negative effects, Pfizer has lost its popularity. Therefore the company should now focus more on its objectives of satisfying its customers by giving healthy and safety performance (Sabapathy 27-30). This effort can help the company to move forward for establishing improvement in its business. The faith of the employee will increase about Pfizer and its product which they are manufacturing (Honderich 113-115). When the product is genuine and saves the life then Pfizer’s employee will get an urge to give its best for developing the company (Likert 87-89). Promotion of wrong drugs by Pfizer leads to the moral degradation of its employee. So to promote its employees morally is also an important duty of the company. In this way Pfizer could improve its ethical standard and meet its objectives by developing a healthy relationship with its employee (Likert 61-66). Design a suitable ethical code A company adopts ethical code to evaluate its members for understanding the difference of right & wrong. It helps to understand the company’s decisions. Pfizer presently is suffering from many ethical issues (MacGillivray 44-47). So the company needs to maintain a suitable ethical conduct for its business. It needs to follow the law and regulations of different countries for developing its drugs. The approval, promotion, pricing, labelling of the drug should be done by focusing and safeguarding the patients. Pfizer should protect the interest of its shareholders, customers, and employee (Zadek 42-44). The company should not pay doctors or other people for prescribing its products. This ethical code comes under the federal health law. By the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (“FDCA”) Pfizer have to promote its product in such a way that the promotion is balanced and consistent with the product labelling. This will help to meet the company’s and its employee’s obligations. According to the privacy law the company have to protect the privacy of its customers and professionals (Carroll 51). In the ethical code regarding the pricing thing Pfizer have maintain fair pricing satisfying its customers. The company have to consider all discounts, incentives etc which could indirectly or directly impact the customer and the company (McCord 77). Pfizer should follow the ethical code of not harming people or animals for solving its own issues. Before testing it product the company should maintain its necessary documents and inform the Government about this. Pfizer should prepare them in facing the consequences resulted for the experiment. In fact it should compensate the losses it has made. The company should understand that its international business of medicine is committed for the development of health by research, production and development (McGinn 18-24). Therefore Pfizer has to focus mainly on its quality of its product and make it reliable to its customers. It should provide accurate information about its product for keeping believe of its customers. This can be the suitable ethical code for Pfizer (McLaren 32-37). Works Cited Adams, Emerald. Character: The Framework for a Successful Life. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 37(3). 2009. Print Altier, Wilson. The Thinking Manager’s Toolbox: Effective Processes for Problem Solving and Decision Making. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. 2009. Print Baier, Kurt. The Point of View of Morality. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 39(3). 2005. Print Balaguer, Mark. 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