BUSI 472 Week 5 Discussion Board Forum 3: Thread Example

Discussion Board Forum 3: Moral Analysis and Ethical Duties

BUSI 472 Organizational Ethics, Discussion Board Forum 3 Thread

Thread by [Student Name]

The forum prompt and the product case are composites; the textbooks and the Scripture cited are real.

Thread

A home appliance company has sold 400,000 units of a popular space heater. Its engineers have found that a wiring flaw causes overheating in roughly one unit in 50,000, and two small house fires have been reported. A full recall would cost about $30 million, roughly a quarter of the company's annual profit, and would draw news coverage at the start of the heating season. The alternative is to fix the design for future production and replace units only when customers complain. Hosmer (2011) presents five ethical systems for analyzing a decision like this, and running the case through each one shows both why ethical analysis is useful and why it is hard.

Eternal law holds that moral standards are revealed in Scripture and in nature and that people should treat others as they would want to be treated. No executive would want a heater with a known fire risk in their own child's room. This system points toward a recall.

Utilitarian benefit asks which option produces the greatest net good for everyone affected. The recall costs $30 million, but a single death or serious fire would carry incalculable human costs, along with lawsuits and damage to trust in the brand. Counting customers' safety fully, the recall likely produces more net benefit.

Universal duty asks whether the principle behind an action could be applied to everyone and whether people are treated as ends rather than means. A rule permitting companies to hide known fire risks to save money could not be universalized, and the quiet fix treats customers as costs. Distributive justice, drawing on Rawls, asks whether the decision protects the least advantaged; the people least able to absorb the harm are customers who never learn of the risk. Both point toward a recall.

Personal liberty, following Nozick, stresses voluntary exchange and freedom from coercion. It does not require the company to recall the heaters, provided buyers are fully informed and free to choose. A quiet fix with no warning would fail even this test, because customers cannot consent to a risk they do not know about. A public warning with an offer of repair might satisfy it, since informed customers could then decide for themselves whether to keep using the heater or accept the fix.

Ferrell et al. (2017) note that individuals often blend these philosophies, which matches what I found: the systems converge on disclosure and differ mainly on how far the company must go. Four of the five systems require a recall, and the fifth requires at least the truth.

The Judeo-Christian perspective agrees with the recall but grounds it differently. Its duty to protect neighbors rests not on a calculation or a social contract but on the command to love one's neighbor (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Leviticus 19:18). Where the secular systems disagree about how far duty extends, Scripture leaves less room: the neighbor's safety is not weighed against profit as one interest among others. My recommendation is a full recall with a candid public notice, which also protects the company's long-term reputation.

References

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Ferrell, O. C., Fraedrich, J., & Ferrell, L. (2017). Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases (11th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Hosmer, L. T. (2011). The ethics of management: A multidisciplinary approach (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill/Irwin.