Business Ethics Teaching - Essay Example

Running Head: ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE OF DECISION-MAKING Student Name Name of Institution Course Code Date of Submission Introduction The movie Erin Brockovich is quite useful in educating individuals about a number of ethical issues through the behavior of its protagonist, Erin Brockovich herself. The movie itself is based on a true life story and that is what indeed guided my choice for it in writing this paper on ethical issues of decisions made on daily life. The summary of the story is that Erin Brockovich struggles to make her ends meet as a single mother and later involved in a car accident that forces her to get connected to EdMasry’s law firm. Out of desperation and economic constraints, Erin Brockovich begins to work in the law firm. The protagonist’s position at the law firm as a clerk put her in a situation of filing papers. She then becomes more interested in the human nature of various medical situations. Her interest lets her to ask her employer allow her investigate the medical cases even further. Through her investigations, Erin Brockovich finds a link and the connectedness between the Hinkley community at large, CA, and another company known as Pacific Gas and Electric that also happens to be located in Hinkley. Erin Brockovich goes ahead to expose several individuals and families within the Hinkley community that suffer from various health problems that include headaches, miscarriages, and gastrointestinal cancer. Through her various discussions with the suffering families and individuals in Hinkley, Erin Brockovich helps us uncover the truth behind the diseases. She does this quite effectively despite her little knowledge of legal issues. Therefore, the film is all about the EdMasry’s law firm and the entire community of Hinkley (Padelford, 2004). Erin also uncovers the existing link between the said diseases and the hexavalent chromium in the water, which infiltrated the community’s water system as a result of waste from Pacific Gas and Electric plant in Hinkley. Ethical Issues This film uses Pacific Gas and Electric Company as the main cornerstone of controversial issues to portray the business world in a very negative perspective. In this case, it is evident from the film that Pacific Gas and Electric Company is a great fault thus allowing us to learn some ethical issues and dilemmas typical of business practice. Two primary ethical issues stand out in the movie as quite harmful in the business world. First, once the Pacific Gas and Electric management gets an information about Masry’s law firm is an investigation of their unethical practices and most specifically the use of hexavalent chromium, the company immediately expresses its disgrace and sends a representative to persuade the law firm to stop their investigations. As a gross malpractice, the said representative is willing to offer bribes to the Jansen family that was highly suffering from serious health complications and their daughter, Annabell, who is suffering from cancer believed to be highly connected with the chromium used by the Pacific Gas and Electric firm in Hinkley. Although the representative defends its firm that it has no any connectivity to the poor health conditions in Hinkley and therefore not willing to pay for any medical bills, he offers the Jansen family a sum of $250,000. The movie perceives the representative as someone with no human heart and whose company is not willing to take responsibility for the damage caused to the Hinkley people (Sims, 2004). Another example of unethical behavior by the Pacific Gas and Electric firm, and therefore business world, is rightfully portrayed when employees of the electric firm make a telephone call with the message and intend to threaten Erin Brockovich with her children as well. The main reason behind the threat is that Erin Brockovich has a very valuable information that would prove the fault of Pacific Gas and Electric in the health issues affecting the Hinkley community. This act of the business is quite damaging and unethical since threatening an innocent individual for companies to thrive in business while at the same time affecting the society is quite common (Crane &Matten, 2010). Companies engage in unethical behaviors to destroy natural resources and intoxicate the environment with wastes and emissions. In this regard, the film portrays business ethics such as deception, bribery, harm to the environment, and ultimately the society’s lack of trust for the local companies and businesses. These ethical business issues are clearly brought out through Pacific Gas and Electric firm and its staff. The film portrays employees of the Pacific firm as motivated by mere selfness without concern of the society. It seems this type of employees were always willing at all times to do anything to survive economically. For instance, an employee of the company continues to wash a tank while suffering from a serious nose bleeding condition. Additionally, Pacific Gas and Electric management also do not care for the immediate environment; otherwise, the management would develop strategies that are aimed at altering the company’s policies to stop the use of harmful chemicals. It is also possible to argue that all the employees of Pacific were of the level one of Kohlberg’s scale with an exception of Charles Embry who approached Erin much later in the film when she was about to conclude her investigations. Mister Charles was instrumental in the suit as he kept the documents that Pacific company had requested him to destroy. Deception of Pacific Gas and Electric and its impact on Hinkley people is the most obvious ethical dilemma of the film. In this case, the company was quite deceitful by persuading the community to believe that their water supply system was indeed safe when actually it was not. Right from the beginning of the movie, deception clearly played out. The film in its beginning shows how Pacific firm held a meeting of over 200 people from the Hinkley community to explain the benefits and importance of using chromium 3 in the firm’s operations. The movie then goes on to unravel how the firm opted to use a harmful chemical mentioned as chromium 6 instead of chromium 3 that it promised members of the community to use. The company used hexavalent chromium while it clearly knew that it was extremely harmful to human health (Crane &Matten, 2010). The deceit went even further when members of the community were made to believe that their children would safely play in their pools and members would safely use water. Towards the end of the film, we are also made to understand that the entire film was a total ‘conscious completed deception,’ since we are told on Pacific Gas and Electric documents that were dated back to 1966, describing how it would be “better not to discuss all documents”. Unfortunately, this issue was not solved since the company in question continued deceiving and being dishonest all throughout the film. As a result, Pacific Gas and Electric firm ended up losing over $333 million paid to sick members of Hinkley, making the company losing the largest amount of money in a direct - action lawsuit in United States history. It would be better if the issue was initially resolved through the removal of the hexavalent chromium in the company’s processes and admitting responsibility. The company should have done everything in their power to ensure that health problems were prevented from spreading to the entire community. The company should have also compensated every individual and families that were affected by the company’s wrongdoing. Pacific Gas and Electric was portrayed very negatively and should have prevented the mess from occurring right from the beginning. Bribery was another major ethical dilemma that comes out very evidently in Erin Brockovich. This issue in the film comes out very negatively as a behavior for companies to engage in wayward business activities by ‘buying’ their way out regardless of the eventual outcome. There were various situations of bribery when Pacific Gas and electric bribed members of the Hinkley community to drop their charges and even accept that their health problems had no any connection with the company in any way whatsoever. A typical example of bribery as mentioned earlier was the company’s offer of $250,000 to Jensen’s family to lure them to drop any charges against the company. This act of bribery was negatively portrayed though quickly averted after Erin and the Jansen family decided not to take the offer. The film also portrays the situation as an insulting one and the company should not have thought of it in the first place. Another act of bribery, believed to have gone to a higher level of ethical dilemma, is that of Pacific Gas and Electric pays for a doctor to visit Hinkley. The company bribed the community to always visit a specific doctor loyal to the company, who then advises the Hinkley people that their health problems were completely unrelated to chromium. The reason why this act is quite higher in ethical dilemmas is that it incorporates issues of bribery, deception, and dishonesty. Although the issue was not resolved in the film, it would be better if the company paid the Hinkley people with health problems for them to see a doctor of their choice. This would allow the people to gain a second opinion on their health conditions. The company should have also written apology letters to people affected by their processes and explain what exactly went wrong. This act of bribery indeed sheds a very disappointing perception of business actions in most companies. Lastly, the issue of business activities destroying the environment clearly came out as a business ethical dilemma in Erin Brockovich. The hexavalent chromium used by the company was quite harmful to human health and the environment as well, especially the water system. As a representative of real world business companies, Pacific Gas and Electric firm are portrayed as not interested in taking care of environmental sustainability whatsoever. Environmental sustainability is a company’s ability to meet its present objectives and goals without necessarily risking future generations from attaining theirs (Crane &Matten, 2004). The company in the film did not develop policies to take care of the environment and therefore exposed the people of Hinkley to serious health risks. The film also puts more emphasis on the company’s fault to skip a step of adding a liner to pools installed in their plant. This would make flow-off water safe for people to use. This act risked sustainability and was clearly dangerous to the environment (Kester et al, 2010). This act of poor environmental sustainability was not resolved in the movie until much later when the company stated that it was no longer using hexavalent chromium in its processes and that it would line its pools to prevent contamination of ground water. It was a serious legal action taken by Erin Brockovich and Ed Masry against the company that motivated it to develop strategies that prevent harmful chemicals from seeping into the ground, thus preventing contamination. The company could have solved this ethical dilemma and wayward behavior without the need for any legal action. However, in the end, the company paid heavily for its unethical behavior. Conclusion Overall, Erin Brockovich is a great movie that brings along a great learning experience because it brought shed more light on the common unethical behaviors that most companies engage in. It is evident that it is difficult for employees to act against their companies as with the case of Pacific Gas and Electric Company in Hinkley. However, it is important for companies and its employees to act in a very ethical manner to avoid issues such as bribery, deception, dishonesty, and failure to comply with environmental sustainability. The movie also expresses the serious impacts of unethical company behaviors that are not well addressed. Therefore, it can be concluded that Erin Brockovich is a movie aimed at unraveling various ethical dilemmas that most companies engage in their business processes to ensure their success and survival in a competitive business world. Reference List Crane, A & Matten, D 2010. Business Ethics, 3rd Edn, Oxford, Oxford university Press. Kester, G., Cooper, G., Dean, R., Gianiodis, P & Goldsby, M 2010, Hollywood Movies in the Classroom: Bringing Finance and Business Ethics Alive, [Online]. pp 1 – 17 Available at: http://www.abe.sju.edu/proc2009/kester.pdf[ Accessed 10th April 2013] Padelford, W 2004, Developing Business Ethics Cases Through Film, [Online]. pp 1 –12 Available at: http://www.cbfa.org/Padelford.pdf [Accessed: 10th April 2013] Sims, R 2004, Business ethics teaching: Using conversational learning to build an effective classroom learning environment, Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 49, no. 2, p. 201 - 221 Read More