Business Ethics

Business Ethics

1.I spill some hot coffee on myself while at a restaurant and get burned I plan to sue the company because they endangered me. Should a reasonable consumer be expected to know that coffee can burn and to have assumed this risk? Is a warning label sufficient? Is our society too protective of consumers these days, or not protective enough?

Utilitarianism (also: utilism) is the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its utility in providing happiness or pleasure as summed among all sentient beings. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome. The most influential contributors to this theory are considered to be Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism was described by Bentham as "the greatest happiness or greatest felicity principle."

2.In developing and producing the Excursion, was the Ford Motor Company sacrificing the environment to profits, or was it acting in a socially responsible way by making the Excursion relatively energy efficient for its vehicle class?

Utility, the good to be maximized, has been defined by various thinkers as happiness or pleasure (versus suffering or pain), although preference utilitarians define it as the satisfaction of preferences. It may be described as a life stance, with happiness or pleasure being of ultimate importance. Utilitarianism can be characterised as a quantitative and reductionist approach to ethics.

3.While on a company business trip should you be allowed to stay in the most expensive hotel, take taxis when you could walk, include wine as food on your expense tab, and take your spouse along at company expense? Is this ethical?

It can be contrasted with deontological ethics (which do not regard the consequences of an act as being a determinant of its moral worth) and virtue ethics (which focuses on character), as well as with other varieties of consequentialism. In general usage, the term utilitarian refers to a somewhat narrow economic or pragmatic viewpoint.

4.Recommend ways in which businesses can be partners with nature by applying the concepts of business ethics, business ecology, and environmental ethics.

Philosophical utilitarianism, however, is a much broader view that encompasses all aspects of people's lives. John Rawls gives a critique of Utilitarianism in A Theory Of Justice that rejects the idea that the happiness of two distinct persons could be meaningfully counted together. He argues that this entails treating a group of many as if it were a single sentient entity, mistakenly ignoring the separation of consciousness.[17] Animal Rights advocate Richard Ryder calls this the 'boundary of the individual', through which neither pain nor pleasure may pass.Thus the aggregation of utility becomes futile as both pain and happiness are intrinsic to and inseparable from the consciousness in which they are felt, rendering impossible the task of adding up the various pleasures of multiple individuals. However, it should be noted that the apparent separation and consistency of individual consciousness, which is both a strong human intuition and an implicit premise in this critique, ...