Tragedies and ethics

The industrial tragedies are what they are. Well tragedies of industrial scale. They raise certain issues and fundamentally alter the conceptions of man's approach and relationship to nature and to the institutions that he has built. It takes no superior wisdom to understand that whatever man creates including institutions should be for the benefit of man, other living beings and of nature in general. In this vein it is worthwhile to examine the questions that the famous disasters or situations pose....

Exxon Valdez

The incident in its magnitude, raised for the first time the question of extending the definition of who is affected to the rest of the living beings as also to the non living environment in addition to people.

The present tendency is to consider the environment as well as the living and the human beings as integral part of the world and to consider any untoward damage or intrusion into the same as something compromising ethics.

A consequence of such thinking is the concern of more and more companies to think in terms of environmental protection and sustainable development. The importance of the case of Exxon Valdez is the new impetus to environmental awareness and mitigation efforts as above.

Johnson and Johnson Tylenol case

The case is an example of how to handle such crises positively. One would well like to think about the response of Cadbury’s in India a couple of years back when some batches of their product was found to be tainted with fungus. The first response of the company was to deny any responsibility and blame it on the distributors however at a very heavy cost. They then had to rope in a brand icon, Amitabh Bachhan to regain their market. The case points that more than mere good deeds, ethics does serve to enhance and preserve the value of reputation. In business terms we call reputation brand equity.

Also the incident brought about some creative innovation in the form of tamper proof packaging.

Ford Pinto case.

This case illustrates how an otherwise perfect decision using sound business tools such as cost benefit analysis can also be used in the wrong place. The use of cost benefit analysis in determining human value in dollar terms is questioned although what the company did was not incorrect legally. Also value of human lives needs sometimes to be calculated in dollar terms as in insurance / compensation etc.

The case also emphasizes the point about caveat vendor (let the seller beware) as it is difficult for lay consumers to make informed choices when it comes to complex products such as a car .

Challenger Disaster

In most organizations there is a predominance of one group over another. In the case of challenger/NASA/Morton Thiokol it was the management priorities prevailing over the technical correctness eventually leading to loss of lives and money and reputation.

The case also highlights the prevalence of group behavioral phenomena such as group think where the pressures of the group forces the individual to concede although all the pointers are in the opposite direction.

Also Asch effect which means that if you repeat a lie often enough it eventually may be perceived as the truth.

Similar was the case with Union Carbide (Bhopal Gas tragedy) where the workers were aware of the clear and present danger but their voice was not heard by the management due to the simple fact that they were workers. Actually the men on the ground know better sometimes than the management. Hierarchy does play a negative role there.

Shell Nigeria.

The case is important in as much as the company Shell tended to destroy a whole tribal land in which the people had not only economic and dwelling attachment but also the attachment over generations.

There is a strange collusion between the military, the government and the multinational company Shell against the very same people that a government is supposed to take care of. We call this collusion the military – government – industrial complex.

It may be that capitalism has reached a stage where the interests of the moneyed business and the interest of the politically powerful become the same and in the process the people suffer.

Also in a situation like the one faced by Shell, it remains a question whether a business has an option and /or a responsibility to leave or refuse to do business in a country which is corrupt and acts against its own people. Can not businesses do without such practices?

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