Friday, March 11

The Best Blogger Out There...

Confession: I strongly strongly dislike blogs, blogging, being bloggy, all of the above. This is not to say that I don't like the Capstone Blogs, just blogs in general :) Maybe I hate them because I don't know how to use them. I must be bitter. I found some fantastic internal documents and I can't figure out how to post them up here. Maybe I can scan them in at the library... ?

But anyways, I have decided to focus my project around the Ford Pinto Scandal, The McDonald's vs Stella Liebeck Case and the BP Oil Spill from last year. I have been fortunate to already find copies of or articles on the internal documents for all three companies. These documents all incriminate these companies as being 'aware yet inactive' in preventing any of the tragedies that have come to be because of their active decision to not make the NEEDED change. For example: Studying this article in my business ethics course last semester first got me interested in this topic. Ford knew about their faulty gas tanks yet chose to continue selling them even though they knew that the possibility for fatality due to crash induced fires was extremely high. BP purchased the less expensive and much riskier casing for the oil rig-- which as we all know resulted in malfunction and explosion. And finally, I was inspired to add McDonalds to my list of companies to take down after seeing this film at the Sundance Film Festival and realizing that the lady who spilled hot coffee on herself actually withstood horrific burns and was only one of a documented 700 customers who been severely burned by their coffee. So basically, this is the angle I will be taking on this project, that companies across this nation continually chose profit over safety, human life and well being. Here are pictures of the Ford Pinto after a crash, the Deep Horizon oil rig explosion and Stella Liebeck's burnsThat covers it for my business aspect but I plan on incorporating a philosophical perspective on how myself and actual philosophers think business ethics should be handled. I met with one of philosophy professors yesterday about getting suggestions on which philosophers would be most relevant to my study. He suggested Plato, in particular, The Republic, which I have read but it's been a couple years so I will obviously need to reread it with a new purpose. I have also contacted another professor who agreed to help me last semester and am hopeful that I will visit with her next week before the break and rack her brain for suggestions and a little more guidance.

Lastly, I am excited about this project but I feel a little bit stuck because it seems like everyone else is doing a project that seems to be more active than writing a research paper. I've said this before, but I don't want this project just to be a research paper. I want to make a difference with it, but I am not quite sure how. After I research the current laws and policies about required business ethics I might be able to propose a new needed law, but I'm pretty sure as an undergraduate I don't have the qualifications to write a new law for the state of Utah...? Scott? Mark? Who knows? :) I've also considered leading a rally against companies such as Ford or McDonalds but I don't want this project to end with me behind bars. I've seriously considering conducting a survey of 50-100 local businesses on their ethical policies but once I have that information I am unsure of where to go from there. I know we are past the suggestions for our project stage but I am still working a lot of kinks out.

I am headed to the library now to see if I can scan in my internal documents and find some actual material that focuses not only on business ethics but the concept of how much a human life is worth and whether or not we can place a value on it.

2 comments:

  1. Tess,

    for someone who doesn't like blogs, you blog elegantly! Now, as for your question about the "research paper" aspect of your proposal, a research paper, well-done, can be an instrument of change. The crucial issue is to focus the research by asking the right questions.

    I've had students, interestingly enough, tackle a similar subject from more or less the opposite point-of-view. That is, I've had at least two or three capstones in the past few years in which the problem researched was how companies can do more effective damage control (PR campaigns, etc.) when hit by scandal. Or, to put it impolitely, how to best cover your company's rump if you're an executive at a corporation that's been hit by scandal and the inevitable following lawsuits. Those papers were all about successful damage control to the image and brand loyalty of the company, leaving aside the issues of whether what caused the scandal was accidental or intentional, evil or just a screw-up.

    I bring those papers up because reading your entry above made me wonder about how you could phrase your question in such a way that your research findings might, eventually, lead you down a path that resulted in genuine reform at these sorts of multinational megacorporations. And the thought occurs to me that you could look into what ethical or oversight lapses led to the scandals in the first place. Although MacDonalds continues to thrive, Ford has at least survived, and BP is likely to survive, all as giant companies carrying despite these and other scandals, I doubt that top executives at any of the three would _welcome_ more of the same sort of scandals and PR disasters. A company that has an effective failsafe mechanism for catching or at least red-flagging the sorts of decisions that callously or just stupidly trade-off short-term benefits against the risk of expensive scandals would be a company that might be more ethical in spite of itself. (This is, of course, somewhat optimistic thinking, but all reformers must trade in optimism to attempt reform in the first place.)

    What were the internal mechanisms of these failures? How could they have been prevented without asking the profit-maxing corporation to transform itself into a noble beast?

    There are reams of studies in business ethics that tackle related cases and related questions. But you've got a good case-history focus, so stick with that. And one book you might find quickly helpful is James Surowiecki's 2004 trade paperback, _The Wisdom of Crowds_, in particular the chapters in which he goes through the decision processes in the Kennedy White House and in NASA during the run-up to the Challenger shuttle explosion. Start by reading the Wikipedia entry on him, which is imperfect, but introduces some of his main ideas about what makes for a "wise" crowd vs. a mad crowd. You might some applicable hypotheses to use as a lens to view what happened in the three cases that you have chosen.

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  2. Tess,
    nicely done -- as you promised!
    I'm guessing you'll be working with Elaine Englehard? She knows these kinds of things really well.
    And I wouldn't worry about a research paper -- most good theses are thoughtful essays.

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