Sparkle-Clean Institutional Housekeeping (Sparkle-Clean), which serviced the Taradevi Institute of Science, Commerce and Arts (TISCA), suffered a drop in performance ratings following numerous complaints about its subpar housekeeping services at TISCA. This was a concerning trend, as Sparkle-Clean had been a reputable brand in the competitive market, providing a high level of interior cleaning services. Such quality challenges and the threat these posed to the company’s reputation called for close monitoring of Sparkle-Clean’s services. The operations manager at Sparkle-Clean recognized the gravity of the issue and realized it could jeopardize the company's long-standing engagement with TISCA. It was thus imperative that Sparkle-Clean swiftly identify and address the underlying issues that had led to the uncharacteristic decline in service delivery quality, to regain its customer’s trust and restore its reputation as a high-quality service provider within the academic sector. To get to the bottom of the issue, the operations manager asked his team to collect, organize, and collate all the data for the current year pertaining to specific complaints and the ratings given by the faculty, staff, and students who used the buildings at TISCA.
In June 2024, Will Jackson, the founder and chief executive officer of Engineered Arts Limited (EA), faced a dilemma: How could his company balance commercial sustainability with ethical and regulatory compliance? EA was a UK-based designer and manufacturer of humanoid robots, most notably the Ameca robot, which had been installed in museums, science centres, and other public venues around the world where it greeted visitors and answered questions. Although EA was in a financially comfortable position, the company wanted to increase production of its humanoid robots, as this could help it achieve economies of scale. To date, EA had grown via the business-to-business model; should it now also embrace the business-to-consumer model? EA already had considerable ethical obligations to its customers and would face serious legal problems if its robots did not comply with regulations. And by producing robots that replaced employees, EA was taking jobs away from real people. Now EA also had to confront the privacy issues and potential data theft implicit in robot deployment. How would these ethical challenges affect EA’s business model and its own functioning as a profitable business?