Monday, February 20, 2012

What are some examples of ethics challenges that industry players have experienced?


Ethics challenges are situations in which organizations have to choose to act between alternatives that are considered right or wrong. Most of the time these decisions are difficult to make but organizations have to make them carefully to avoid hurting their reputation and profits as a consequence of their actions. They have to take into account long-term consequences instead of just caring about short-term ones.

Johnson and Johnson is a company that was known for being socially responsible for choosing the considered right alternatives and believing in “patients come before profits”. Now, unfortunately, Johnson and Johnson is presenting ethical challenges. This organization’s ethical issues consist in having on recall some of their products, such as: different medicine brands, surgical sutures and contact lenses because they were defective or the medicines had un-identified side effects. The company also has issues on some of their products’ quality and safety. For example, they have quality and safety issues on their artificial hips. The company has response ineffectively to these situations. This is worrying because reflects that for the company profile making is more important than providing good quality without presenting negative impacts on their customers although the company used to believed in “patients come before profits”.

 Animal testing is other significant problem in this industry how Dye mentioned in her post. Avon, Mary Kay and Estée Lauder are companies that stopped testing on animals and were added on PETA’s cruelty free list. The problem is that now the Chinese government requires animal testing for cosmetics and skin care products that are sold in China. Mary Kay is not doing animal testing and is negotiating with the Chinese government for other methods to test the products. Instead Avon and Estée Lauder are doing animal testing on China to meet government requirements. For this reason PETA’s removed these two companies from the PETA’s cruelty free list.

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4 comments:

  1. Do you think the average consumer pays attention to this list by PETA?

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  2. I think public image is incredibly important to this industry. It's a fairly competitive industry, and a negative social image can maybe turn the tables for people who are socially conscious.

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  4. Maybe the average consumer does not pay much attention to this list by PETA. Anyway I think that being or not being there helps to strengthen or weaken these companies reputation. There is always people that defends animals rights and they can be a significant amount. For example, I am a person who defends animal rights. If I am deciding between two companies products and I know that a company is listed on PETA'S cruelty free list and the other one is cruel with animals, I will buy the products of the company that is on the cruelty free list.

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