These vignettes highlight several ethical issues for MBA students as they begin to look for a job. They serve as a practical springboard for a discussion of topics, including one's obligation to classmates, the recruiting firm, and the school itself.
Following the May 2010 Sweet Seeds campaign, Zynga announced that it would expand its FATEM partnership to build a school for children in Haiti who had been affected by the devastating earthquake in January of that year. In one week, more than 45,000 FarmVille users raised $110,000 through the purchase of virtual social goods. Sweet Seeds would be the first of several campaigns Zynga launched to raise funds for the school. In the meantime, Zynga.org's management had to establish concrete measures for the various projects' success, including efficient implementation, self-sustainability, and replication. Maintaining a strong feedback loop so that those who contributed to these campaigns could see the results was important. Despite competition, Zynga remained, in 2010, a wildly successful company and its dot-org arm helped Mark Pincus and Laura Hartman realize the new type of social strategy they had discussed over the years.
The B case of this three-case series outlines how Mark Pincus, with help from his sister Laura Hartman, began to implement his new brand of social strategy. Initial steps included two partnerships: (1) Zynga's YoVille and the San Francisco SPCA; and (2) Mafia Wars and the Huntington's Disease Society of America. A new program within Zynga was created: Zynga.org, which would focus on global problems and ways to address them. Its first project, in partnership with Zynga's wildly popular FarmVille, was a strategy in which users could purchase "Sweet Seeds for Haiti." Through FarmVille, Zynga would contribute 50% of all proceeds from the sale of these seeds to two Haiti-based causes: Fonkoze and FATEM (a microfinance initiative and an educational and school-meals program, respectively). In 2010, Zynga.org continued to evolve, with periodic bumps along the way when Zynga encountered bad press and unfavorable attention.
In January 2009, Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of the immensely popular and successful Zynga Game Network met with his sister Laura Hartman, DePaul University business ethics professor, to discuss building a new brand of corporate social strategy. Pincus wanted to find a way that Zynga could have a greater social impact on the world. He and Hartman talked about creating a new social strategy that would naturally flow out of Zynga's success in developing highly profitable interactive social games. The two of them wondered whether it was possible for one company to develop a strategy that would both be profitable and engender social change.
This case picks up after the end of "ExxonMobil and the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline (A)" (UVA-E-0262), presenting additional facts, advancing in the story, and setting up a new and challenging decision to be made about the project.
One of the few remaining producers of lead additives must decide whether to continue producing them for use abroad. Banned in the United States, lead additives were still legal in developing nations. Ellie Shannon, the division manager overseeing bromine production for the Indiana-based Great Lakes Chemical Corporation (Great Lakes), must advise Great Lakes' directors on whether the company should 1) continue production for the foreseeable future, while developing countries moved from leaded vehicles to unleaded vehicles; 2) wash its hands entirely and immediately of the lead additive business; or 3) aggressively phase out its participation in this marketplace, with a five-year deadline, while lobbying for developing nations to switch to unleaded gasoline. Each of the options had its downside, however, financially, operationally, and in terms of reputation. Great Lakes placed a great deal of importance in its shareholders' well-being and in remaining a viable company, but it also wanted to be-and to be seen as-a respectable corporate citizen.
Set in India in the 1980s and 1990s, this series of cases concerns the attempts by the Unilever division Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) to create, market, and distribute a detergent for India's rural poor. The upstart, low-priced Nirma detergent, manufactured by a former chemist, has overtaken HLL in the detergent market primarily because Nirma is being distributed and sold to this previously ignored segment of India's population. In this war of laundry powders, HLL must revise its traditional practices in manufacturing, marketing, and distribution pursuant to C. K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond's theory of the worldwide four-tiered market, in which the "bottom of the pyramid" is an untapped and potentially lucrative market. See also UV5263, UV4263, and UV5266.
Set in India in the 1980s and 1990s, this series of cases concerns the attempts by the Unilever division Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) to create, market, and distribute a detergent for India's rural poor. The upstart, low-priced Nirma detergent, manufactured by a former chemist, has overtaken HLL in the detergent market primarily because Nirma is being distributed and sold to this previously ignored segment of India's population. In this war of laundry powders, HLL must revise its traditional practices in manufacturing, marketing, and distribution pursuant to C. K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond's theory of the worldwide four-tiered market, in which the "bottom of the pyramid" is an untapped and potentially lucrative market. See also UV5263, UV1972, and UV5266.
Set in India in the 1980s and 1990s, this series of cases concerns the attempts by the Unilever division Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) to create, market, and distribute a detergent for India's rural poor. The upstart, low-priced Nirma detergent, manufactured by a former chemist, has overtaken HLL in the detergent market primarily because Nirma is being distributed and sold to this previously ignored market segment. In this war of laundry powders, HLL must revise its traditional practices in manufacturing, marketing, and distribution pursuant to C. K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond's theory of the worldwide four-tiered market, in which the "bottom of the pyramid" is an untapped and potentially lucrative market. See also the B (UV1972), C (UV4263), and D (UV5266) cases.
Set in India in the 1980s and 1990s, this series of cases concerns the attempts by the Unilever division Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) to create, market, and distribute a detergent for India's rural poor. The upstart, low-priced Nirma detergent, manufactured by a former chemist, has overtaken HLL in the detergent market primarily because Nirma is being distributed and sold to this previously ignored segment of India's population. In this war of laundry powders, HLL must revise its traditional practices in manufacturing, marketing, and distribution pursuant to C. K. Prahalad and Allen Hammond's theory of the worldwide four-tiered market, in which the "bottom of the pyramid" is an untapped and potentially lucrative market. See also UV5263, UV1972, and UV4263.
This note explains deontology and its use in ethical reasoning. Deontology is the idea that an action is morally right if it is done out of a sense of duty.
This brief note explains the concept of virtue as it appears in the literature on business ethics. It examines the relationships among virtue, character, and right action.
This note examines the concept of relativism as it often appears in business. It discusses four separate types of relativism, and lays out the reasons why relativism is a bad idea.
Judy Wiles, president and owner of First Impressions, Inc., needs new ideas to market her temporary-food-service employment agency to lucrative private accounts in suburban Detroit. In the A case, Wiles, a member of a minority group, encounters overtly racist behavior, which spurs her to implement changes to her marketing plan. The B case supplies a new twist: Wiles decides to hire a white front man to present the "public face" of her company. The A and B cases present an exciting forum to discuss the conflict between "values and profits," and the C case provides the dramatic epilogue. A teaching note is available to registered faculty, along with a video supplement to enhance student learning.
Fingerhut, based in Minnetonka, Minnesota, is a direct-marketing company that sells a smorgasbord of consumer goods through an array of specially targeted catalogs. In November 1996, an article in the Star Tribune, a major Minneapolis newspaper, drew attention to a class-action lawsuit pending against Fingerhut that suggests the firm made its profits by exploiting the poor. Several civil rights groups rallied around the suit and submitted amicus curiae in favor of the litigation. The case illustrates issues in ethics and management communication. Discussions focus on the constituencies. Is Fingerhut exploiting its customers or providing them with an affordable method of obtaining valued consumer goods on credit? Do retailers have a duty to offer products at reasonable prices? Are the high interest rates reasonable given the risk? What are the options: pawn shops, rent-to-own? What is the profile of the typical Fingerhut customer? Discussions also focus on the issues communicating to the constituencies. How much damage will the lawsuit do to Fingerhut's image as an ethical, socially conscious company? What communication strategies can the firm employ? Should it react to the lawsuit? What should it tell its employees?
Moral theories provide us with reasonable criteria for making moral judgments and evaluating decisions and actions. There is, however, one difficulty with approaching moral reasoning strictly from a "moral-theories" approach: Despite their knowledge of ethical theories, intelligent, reasonable people make moral mistakes. These mistakes cannot be attributed solely to ignorance or insensitivity or even merely to weakness of character, but rather to a paucity of moral imagination. Moral judgments involve a delicate balance of context, evaluation, projection of moral standards, and imagination. The linchpin of this process is a highly developed moral imagination that perceives the nuances of a situation, challenges the framework or scheme in which the event is embedded, and imagines how it might be different.
This series of cases (see also the B [UVA-E-0108], C [UVA-E-0109], D [UVA-E-0110], and E [UVA-E-0147] cases) takes students through five design-and-manufacturing decisions confronting Albin Kalin, managing director of Rohner Textil AG, a textiles manufacturer in northeastern Switzerland. Faced with community pressure to use quieter machinery and challenged by increasingly stricter environmental regulations, Kalin has committed himself to improving the ecological profile of the mill. He has adopted a set of rule-based design imperatives proposed by William McDonough based on McDonough's concept "waste equals food." Given these strict environmental parameters, Kalin attempts to design and manufacture a compostable fabric for DesignTex, a division of the U.S. company Steelcase. The A case examines Kalin's choice of a twisting-yarn supplier: the two alternatives pose significant differences in product quality, reliability, and performance.
Susan Lyons, a vice president at DesignTex, a firm that develops high-end custom fabric collections, wants to create an environmentally responsible fabric that will provide a model for sustainable design. Lyons consults with William McDonough, a noted designer of environmentally sustainable buildings and materials, whose stated ideal is that "no environmental risk is acceptable." The A case follows the development of a new furniture fabric and asks students to decide whether McDonough's principles go too far--whether it is really necessary or feasible to redesign the chemical protocols to produce a completely compostable product that emerges from an absolutely clean manufacturing process. See also the B case (E-0100).