Exam 5: Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Sustainability

In its extreme viewpoint, _____ suggests that if a culture supports slavery, it is all right to use slave labor in the country.

A(n) _____ asserts that if a manager of a multinational sees that firms from other nations are not following ethical norms in a host nation, that manager should not either.

Milton Friedman's basic position is that the only social responsibility of business is to increase profits, so long as the company stays within the rules of law.

Cultural relativism suggests that even if slavery is culturally acceptable in a country, a foreign firm operating in that country should avoid using slave labor.

Corporations can contribute to the global tragedy of the commons by not pumping pollutants into the atmosphere or dumping them in oceans or rivers.

The Friedman doctrine is the belief that ethics are nothing more than a reflection of culture and therefore, a firm should adopt the ethics of the culture in which it is operating.

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, related to employment, upholds which of the following?

An American manager in Colombia routinely pays off the local drug lord to guarantee that his plant will not be bombed and that none of his employees will be kidnapped. The manager argues that such payments are ethically defensible because everyone is doing it. The manager's argument exemplifies which of the following ethical approaches?

A multinational company is accused of paying bribes to the government of a host country to obtain permission to build a production factory. The public relations manager of the company defends the company's actions as being ethically sound; he states that in the host country, paying bribes to government officials is the accepted norm and is in keeping with the social practices in the host country. The public relations manager is using which of the following philosophical doctrines to defend the actions of the company?

A firm's organizational culture refers to the values and norms that are shared among employees of an organization.

An international U.S.-based company sets up a production unit in a developing country with poor environmental regulations. This contributes to the:

Building an organization culture that places a high value on ethical behavior requires incentive and reward systems.

An American firm that sets up production units in China is accused of releasing untreated chemical waste into water bodies. The manager of the firm defends the firm stating that, factories in China set up by French and British firms also release untreated chemical waste into water bodies. What approach to business ethics is the manager using?

Which of the following statements is true about the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Facilitating payments are also known as _____.

Discuss the cultural relativism approach to business ethics. What is the connection between this approach and the phrase "When in Rome do as the Romans"? How well does this approach hold up ethically?

An individual with a strong sense of personal ethics is less likely to behave in an unethical manner in a business setting.

The utilitarian approach to ethics is a straw men approach to business ethics that has some inherent value, but is unsatisfactory in important ways.

Companies can strengthen the _____ of employees by committing themselves to not retaliate against employees who complain about unethical actions.

BP, one of the world's largest oil companies, has made it part of the company policy to undertake "social investments" in the countries where it does business. There was no economic reason for BP to make this social investment, but the company believes it is morally obligated to give something back to the societies that have made their success possible. BP's actions are an example of: