CLASS PROJECT
BLW 302-Legal and Ethical Environment of Business
Fall Semester 2009
Prof. Aalberts

Purpose of the Project

The purpose of your class project for this semester is to become more versed in the language and application of ethical theories that can be used to resolve ethical dilemmas you have and will face in your business, political or personal lives. To accomplish this objective, you will be required to write two (2) ethical analyses which will be due at class time on Wednesday, December 2, 2009.

Step 1-Form a Team

Your first responsibility is to divide up into groups or teams of four (4) persons selected from among your classmates in the class. You are responsible for selecting your own team members. Your team will work together in writing your paper. You will decide how to divide up the work duties and responsibilities. In order to do this job effectively it is recommended that you meet periodically to select the two ethical issues and engage in a discussion of how the various ethical theories apply to your scenarios. In fact, this assignment is designed to take advantage of the positive aspects of working in teams to resolve difficult issues that require debate, rebuttal and drawing conclusions.
All members of your team will receive the same grade for the paper.  However, since it occasionally happens that one student will do little or no work on the project, there will be an “escape valve.” The escape valve is provided because those who are “slackers” on this project violate the ethical principle of fairness and justice since the other students must work harder and are therefore more burden when they are required to overcome the slackers’ lack of effort. This is unacceptable. The procedure that will be employed is that on the day when the papers are due, each team will have the option of handing in to the instructor a brief explanation indicating whether any of the students in the group should receive a lower grade than the other students, and if so, why.  Since the instructor cannot observe the process of preparing the finished product, this is the only way to know if someone is unfairly receiving a higher grade for doing little or no work with his or her project teammates. The instructor reserves the right to discuss the issue with the alleged slacker to determine whether he or she will be given equal credit.
You are required to hand in at class time or email to the instructor the names of the team members no later than Wednesday, September 30th.
Step 2-Come Up with Your Topics
Your second responsibility is to come up with two (2) topics or scenarios from which you will write your ethical analyses. The preference is to write on ethical dilemmas that one of the teammates or someone one of the teammates knows, may have actually experienced. These can wide-ranging and can consist of business-related experiences, perhaps when a team member was an employee or a consumer. Examples of business related ethical dilemmas are well illustrated in your textbook- Business: Its Legal, Ethical and Global Environment on pages 35-41. These include: taking things that don’t belong to you, saying things you know are not true, giving or allowing false impressions, buying influence or engaging in a conflict of interest, and a number of others. Your paper can also be drawn from a political or public policy issue that may pertain to business, property rights and other topics we study. An example of this is feeding the homeless in city parks and ordinances outlawing the practice. This scenario is analyzed as an example below.
You will be required to give hand in at class time or email the topics of your paper by Wednesday, October 21th.
Step 3-Write Your Paper
As the intellectual and structural foundation for writing your paper, the instructor will hand out an outline and lecture to the class on ethics at the beginning of the semester. We will the discuss in class how to construct an effective ethical analysis.
The outline for forming an ethical analysis is presented below:
ETHICAL ANALYSES: THREE APPROACHES TO MORAL DECISION-MAKING

“Immoral behavior often flows from ignorance.” Plato

             Utilitarian Analysis

(Teleological Approach)

• Definition: The moral outcome is whatever provides the greatest pleasure for the greatest number.

• Identify the ethical/moral issue.

• Identify all the parties who may be receive pain as a consequence of the moral decision.

• Assign weights to the amount of pain* these parties may receive as a consequence of the ethical action or dilemma.

• Identify the parties who may receive pleasure as a consequence of the moral action or dilemma.

• Assign weights to the amount of pleasure* the parties may receive as a consequence of the moral action or dilemma.

• Weigh the two against each other.

• Determine which is greatest- the amount of pain or the amount of pleasure.

• If the pleasure outweighs the pain, the decision is morally correct.

• If the pain outweighs the pleasure, the decision is morally wrong.

*Assigning weights to determine pain and pleasure is often difficult since it is inherently speculative and often requires the quantification of factors that are highly subjective and qualitative in nature (e.g. what weight do you assign to the pleasure of seeing a clear, pollution-free view of the ocean? Does that outweigh the pain of the costs of environmental laws that may affect economic viability?).
Jeremy Bentham referred to the calculation or algorithm of pleasure as the felicific calculus. In principle, the felicific calculus can justify the moral correctness of an act. The felicific calculus is also referred to as the utility calculus, the hedonistic calculus and the hedonic calculus. In examining pain and pleasure, Bentham stated that you must look at the intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, (the relationship and connection between the parties), fecundity (the chance that a pleasure is followed by other ones, a pain by further pains), purity (the chance that pleasure is followed by pains and vice versa), and extent of both.
                                   
Rights and Duties Analysis
(Deontological Approach)

• Definition: The moral act is the act which recognizes the rights of others and the duties that those rights impose on the actor.

• Identify the ethical/moral issue.

• Identify the source of the right or rights the party may have-

is it a right as a human, a right as a citizen or occupant created by law under federal, law or local laws, a right by position, or a right by contract?

• Once the right is identified, articulate the duty that corresponds to the right.

• If a person’s right or rights are infringed upon by those who owe the duty, then the party breaching the duty is morally wrong.

• Weigh against each other the relative importance of the rights and duties that are at issue.*

• Note: If there are no right or rights that can be identified, then there is no duty and

therefore no ethical or moral issue.

*Most ethicists generally do not consider any rights to be absolute. Even the right to life, perhaps the most important and obviously most essential right we have as humans, can be overridden by those defending themselves to preserve their own lives or those engaged in a “just” war, for example. Therefore, there may be situations in which some rights, such as the right to life, could be considered more important than the right, for example, to be told the truth. This is sometimes called “situational ethics” or “ethical or moral relativism” and is not followed by all ethicists, most importantly Immanuel Kant, who advanced the “Categorical Imperative” theory of deontological ethics.

Fairness and Justice Analysis
  (Rawlsian Approach)

• Definition: The moral act is the act that treats similarly situated people in similar ways with regard to both process and outcome, and with a sense of proportionality.

• Identify the policy- it may be either public (government) or private (business) policy.

• Identify the group of similarly situated people who will be subject to the policy.*

• To determine whether the policy is substantively fair, i.e., does it adhere to the principles of distributive justice,analyze the policy to determine whether the burdens and benefits of the policy are distributed in a fair and just manner.**

• To determine whether the policy is procedurally fair and just to those in the similarly situated group, the principles of procedural justice must also be applied.

• To do this, identify the process or procedures that are being used to carry out the policy in question.

• Are the procedures applied in a similar manner to those in the group?

• If so, the procedures adhere to the principles of procedural justice.

• Are the outcomes proportional to the wrong committed? That is, even if the outcomes and procedures are carried out fairly, the punishment must be proportional to the wrongful act.***

*A similarly situated group would consist of people who share important common characteristics that are important in determining the fairness and justice of an action that has moral consequences. An example would be students in this class. If the instructor decides to give males 15 minutes more than females to take an exam would this be fair and just? Since all students regardless of their gender are similarly situated, this would be analyzed to determine whether this decision is fair and just. To say that males and females in a classroom taking a test are not similarly situated but are two distinguishable groups would be illogical and therefore a flawed analysis. However if teenage males and females are analyzed for determining penalties for statutory rape, they may not be considered similarly situated since females can become pregnant and males cannot. From a public policy perspective, this difference is very important.

**To determine what is fair and just, an application of philosopher John Rawl’s “Veil of Ignorance” theory may be helpful. The Veil of Ignorance concept helps to remove personal bias from the analysis. See lecture notes for the manner in which this theory can be used to determine issues of fairness and justice.
***Rawls refers to this as retributive justice. For example, should a shoplifter be sentenced to life in prison, or should an employee be fired for taking home (technically stealing) a paper clip with little expectation that he will return or replace it?
Last Responsibility: Read this Example. It Will Help You Write Your Team Paper

        
Should Cities Outlaw Feeding The Homeless In Public Places?

Facts:
Cities across the United States, including Las Vegas, are wrestling with the issue of how to handle the millions of homeless people who frequent public areas. Homeless people, many of whom have serious mental problems, often refuse to live in government-provided housing and do not want to eat at government food banks or fill out forms to take food from charities (charities often require some paperwork to be compensated by the government) because they are, often incorrectly, afraid of being controlled by social services. As a result, many homeless people congregate in public parks and other areas, begging for food and money. Moreover, some charitable groups, often informally, hand out meals in these parks. Many people complain that the homeless ruin the parks by littering, including leaving drug needles, garbage, and beer bottles, causing home values to drop and causing people to use the parks less frequently. In an effort to remove the homeless from the parks, some cities are proposing those who feed the homeless should be fined to discourage them from coming to the parks. Civil liberty groups argue that these laws target the poor, not just those who cause problems, because many people consider the poor to be unsightly and don’t want to have them around.

 The Issue:
This ethical issue concerns the ethical and public policy issues surrounding laws, proposed in some communities, that outlaw the feeding of the homeless. Such an ordinance was proposed for the City of Las Vegas.

Utilitarianism: The Rule
Utilitarianism provides that that moral correctness is determined by determining whether the decision or policy bestows the greatest pleasure for the greatest number.

This law and policy does bestow pleasure for a large number of people. It may bestow the greatest pleasure to the greatest number in absolute terms – those who are not homeless – who also may wish to enjoy the parks. It will also require less taxpayer money to maintain the parks and will likely make them safer. The neighborhoods will also gain from the pleasure of not having the homeless around who may detrimentally affect land values. Not feeding the homes may also result in pleasure for some of the homeless themselves who will now not be “enabled” by those feeding them. A few may turn themselves around once they know they have no other options for being fed, and may seek help to rid themselves of the health and addiction problems that got them in their current straits.

From a pain perspective, however - not feeding those who are fewer in absolute numbers and may not seek food from legal or charitable sources - will be highly painful. Public parks may be the only place where they are able to get food. If we calculate the degree of pain, which utilitarian philosophers call the felicific calculus, we may find that the more extreme pain of hunger and health problems in general suffered by a relative few may outweigh the pleasure of the many using the park and the surrounding neighborhoods and property values affected by the influx of homeless. The fact that many of these homeless are there because of bad choices or addictions does not detract from the fact that these are dire consequences being imposed on them. Many may also be there because of homelessness caused by job loss, as well as children who are innocent victims and may be hurt because of irresponsible parents.

Note: If you can find data on your issue use it to bolster your moral justification. For instance, in the above example, if you can find data on homelessness in Las Vegas, it would greatly support your position.

Conclusion: Although it is difficult to compute the relative pain and pleasure, both of which are speculative, it appears that the highly painful consequences of hunger overrides the pleasure incurred by those who do not wish to see or have the homeless in their parks and neighborhoods.

Rights and Duties (Formalism)-The Rule

Under rights and duties, the moral act is the act which recognizes the rights of others and the duties that those rights impose on the actor.
 
From a rights and duties point of view, humans have natural rights to life, and some argue rights as humans to health and safety. This is sometimes called the natural law since it is universal in time and space. If being fed is the only way a homeless person in the community can live, than they should have a natural right to seek food there. However, that would mean someone has a duty under the natural law to feed homeless people.

In the United States, it would be rare to find a place that doesn’t have a facility operated by the government or a charity to help people who are homeless and hungry.  As a state, however, Nevada has been sorely lacking in government initiated programs to help the homeless. Still, since the government or charities, the latter of which is often supported and subsidized by the government, do provide food, this may also create a right to be fed under the law and therefore a moral right to be feed, at least at these facilities. This does not give the homeless a right necessarily to be fed in public parks, however. In respect to rights by position or contract, the homeless do not have such rights.

Another right to consider is whether private persons and charities have a right to feed the homeless in the park. If so, the city would have a duty to leave them alone so they can do so. A person may again have a right to help those less fortunate as a human being. Since food is obviously basic for survival, feeding another could be seen as a right under the natural law. In the absence of a law to the contrary, there is no law that says we can’t feed the homeless in a city park. If such a law is passed, then the city now has the legal right to stop those who wish to feed the homeless, and we have a legal and perhaps a moral duty to obey this law. This may be one place where an ethicist could argue that the law and ethics do not converge and that the natural law may trump the positive (government-created law) law.

Conclusion: If this ordinance is passed, the homeless have no legal, positional or contractual rights to be fed in the park. In fact they will have a duty not to be fed, since the city has a right to exclude them eating handouts in the park. However, even if there are no such rights, there is a basic human right to be fed if you are hungry, even in a public park. This right may arguably override the right created by the city to prevent people from feeding the homeless.

Fairness and Justice-The Rule
Under the fairness and justice approach, the moral act is the act that treats similarly situated people in similar ways with regard to both process and outcome, and with a sense of proportionality.

Lastly, is it fair and just for the City of Las Vegas to impose these laws on the homeless? If homeless people and those who are not homeless are not considered to be similarly situated in their use of the park, then it may be fair. This would mean it is fair and just for a middle class couple giving extra food they cannot eat to another middle class family in an adjacent picnic table while not feeding a homeless person who has not eaten for two days is fair and just. Obviously, placing mentally and physically disabled people who are poor and unsightly in a separate category from those who are not poor and unhealthy is highly problematic and perhaps extreme from an ethical perspective.

For determining distributive justice (unfair burdens imposed versus others in the same group) is to analyze this through the lens of the “Veil of Justice” created by the philosopher John Rawls. If you were not born yet and did not know what condition you would be born with (poor, rich, old, young etc.) would you want such a law? After all you could be born homeless. As Rawls states under this theory, people would act rationally if given this scenario in which they would distribute extra resources to those less privileged even if the resources are not distributed evenly to everyone else in the group.

Conclusion: If we assume that people, regardless of their status as homeless or not, are considered similarly situated, then they should all be allowed to eat in the park from a fairness and justice perspective.

RUBRIC FOR GRADING BLW 302 - Law and Ethical Environment of Business Project

Maximum Points: 60 POINTS
 

 
 
Student Score:   __________ / 60