Understanding the Lawfulness of Electronic Signature for Business Ethics Disclosure in the United States

How to eSign a document: electronic signature lawfulness for Business Ethics and Conduct Disclosure Statement in United States

hi this is the Sixth and last installment of a business ethics tutorial and I'm going to wrap things up uh with three final business case studies to practice uh our skills at applying uh ethical principles I'm going to begin with looking at McDonald's and their influence on our diet then I'm going to look at a well-known case study called the Bullard houses and I'm going to finish up with an environmental case involving the conical oil company so first McDonald's well perhaps you saw the film called super siiz me came out in 2004 it looked at the effect of McDonald's on our health and the Obesity problem in the US and so forth uh the name came from the fact at that time you know the McDonald's workers were instructed to ask the uh customer can I super siize you meaning give you a large size of fries or a drink rather than the regular size at about the time the film came out McDonald stopped super sizing they claimed it had nothing to do with this film but it was about the same time okay so in the film The the director of the film Morgan Spurlock uh went one month eating nothing but McDonald's morning noon and night nothing but McDonald's to see what it would do to him okay what did it do to him well he went to the doctor before he went to the doctor after he gained 24 pounds during the month he had a number of other problems his blood tests were coming out bad his liver and so forth well so it didn't look like it was a very healthy diet and in fact he had to go on a detox diet afterwards you know to lose the weight and get back to normal it took a while uh so the film suggests that this McDonald's diet is influencing the way we eat and it's influencing our health and contributing to the obes of the epidemic in the US so we're going to try to look at the issue is McDonald is doing something unethical here we're going to look at this there's a lot of good lessons in this case and it does get some people upset okay so I realized that so bear with me I'm not propounding a view here I'm only showing you how the arguments play out and you can think about it okay so there's really two issues involved one is the McDonald's menu ethical and two how about their marketing practices particularly toward children so I'm going to look at that as well okay I'm going to assume that there's full disclosure right the customer knows what's in the Big Mac you know the ingredients all the fat and the sugar and the calories they're there you know easily available so we have no problem with disclosure now the usual arguments you hear well McDonald's is bad because they're you know they're harming their customers right they're feeding them food that's unhealthy they're getting diabetes and so forth uh and you know they're enticing kids to come in with these kids meals you know Happy Meals and the kids get hooked on this stuff they develop a taste for it all right on the other hand people defend McDonald's by saying well you know these are considering adults this is what the customer wants McDonald's is not responsible for what their customers want they're just providing you know the demand and besides they offer salads if you want a salad although I understand that the dressing on the salad actually has more calories than a Big Mac too bad and finally as for the kids well parents are responsible for their kids that's there a responsibility okay so you you can listen to these arguments all day long and get nowhere Let's see we can get somewhere with this okay so issue number one is the menu anything wrong with this the utilitarian is the key one here okay what's the effect of offering this menu to the world um it's a question of fact and not ethics okay we cannot resolve the health effects of McDonald's marketing and menu by sitting around talking about it you got to go out there and research it okay that's why we distinguish issues of fact and issues of Ethics then the ethical decision depends on the outcome of the research okay on the other hand we can't just sit back and say well I think it's okay right because there's probably a prim aasy case here that the McDonald's menu is having a negative effect on health right it's making people F at least it looks that way so it's probably not rational to believe that McDonald's menu is having no negative effect given casual observation at least we got to do is to research this issue the least we got to do to be ethical here now I'm going to make an assumption so we have something to talk about okay I'm not claiming this I'm only assuming for the sake of argument let's assume that the McDonald's menu could be adjusted to increase utility at least a little if nothing else they can take all that high fructose corn syrup out of the buns out of the hamburger buns okay they going to taste the same you won't get as fat I'm going to assume that there's something they could do maybe a little but at least something and if that's true they're failing the utilitarian test because they should do it now I'm not assuming that McDonald's causes people to be overweight I'm not assuming that McDonald's is doing more harm than good and they're doing a lot of good I'm only assuming that McDonald's could at least tweak its menu to make it better for people if that's true they're failing the test now the response to that is the one I mentioned before okay may be true but these are consenting adults we'll talk about kids later these are people coming in asking for this stuff I mean who is McDonald's to say what people should eat it's just not their responsibility you know to make decisions for other people so yeah maybe utilitarian test you know is failed but so what well I have to tell you utilitarian test takes into account all of the consequences including those that are mediated by the choices of others now if you don't think so suppose you're a pharmaceutical company and you have two possible projects in front of you one project is a miracle cure for cancer it's going to relieve millions of people from a horrible death you can develop that drug or you have another product that's you know this really super duper toenail polish make your toenails look great okay equally profitable okay you measure the utility the cancer drug utility goes through the roof it's wonderful you know the toenail polish okay not so good so what are you going to do to pass utilitarian test are you're going to say well in either case people freely choose to use the product right okay so you know people freely choose to take the cancer drug the Physicians freely choose to prescribe it so there you have free choice just like in the hamburgers and french fries so for that reason you're simply not going to count all that good it does you're not going to count all that relief of suffering and death because other people choose it of course you're going to count it so you got to count all the consequences even if free choices are are involved so that's the way the test works I ask for this idea about being responsible for others decisions this is not to imply that McDonald's is supposed to be responsible let's suppose some customer comes in and Gorges himself with chicken McNuggets and ruins his health McDonald's is off the hook so long as it's total utility is maximized it's not responsible for that customer's decision we're only saying m is are responsible for the total utilitarian consequences of its decision which may be mediated or go through the choices of others now am I being puritanical it's a sort of an Anglo-Saxon proclivity we have here in the US isn't life about some indulging well of course it is you that's okay like you have a mom and pop restaurant and they have these luscious fudge brownies okay and you give in the temptation to eat one well that probably increases utility right you don't eat enough of those just once a week or once a month and you you love it no problem the difficulty with McDonald's is that they're ubiquitous right they're everywhere they're so convenient and when they offer a product like that everyone is eating it the utilitarian outcome is different for them this is the price of success you have greater responsibility you have greater consequences you got to consider those consequences so yeah you don't have to be panical just consider the overall consequences people can indulge to a certain degree just not all the time okay now the children thing well the marketing is more aggressive than you might think okay it's true they have the Happy Meals they have the play areas to entice the kids and give them a free toy okay but also I mean I have read that the marketing people actually ride around an SUVs with parents to watch the kids nag their parents at topic McDonald's and they observe which nagging techniques work then they demonstrate those techniques in their ads so the kids will know how to nag their parents now maybe this isn't really true I don't really know but let's suppose it is true and think about whether it's ethical utilitarian test we still have a problem if this this is deleterious to the kids' Health even though it's mediated by the free choices of the kids and their parents it fails the utilitarian test it's that simple but we have also another test to think about and that's the autonomy issue are we violating the autonomy of these kids by inducing them to want McDonald's food they're kids that can't resist this type of Temptation the way adults can are we exploiting these kids by circumventing their autonomy yeah we are but you know we always do that with kids we violated kids autonomy when we raise them in the home you have to of course one of the objects of raising your kids so that they will be autonomous adults later on you prepare them for autonomy but while they're kid you have to say you're you're going to do this you know you're going to think this way this is part of raising kids so parents already manipulate kids to some extent we have to do that so that's the McDonald's case I'd like to move on to another case study this is a very well-known case study it's used often in inba courses it's called the Bullard houses and it's about negotiation there is a family called the Bullard family that owns some decaying town houses and they like to have them redeveloped they're going to sell them to a developer but they don't want the development to be garish and commercialized they just want a nice pleasant townhouse development there's a hotel chain the Conrad Milton Hotel chain they wants to buy these things and actually put a big high-rise hotel and use the houses as a kind of Lobby for the hotel just the sort of thing the family doesn't want to happen well the hotel chain is negotiating through an agent who is not telling who their client is so when the Bullard go to negotiate with this agent it's called Absentia they don't know that the hotel chain is actually behind the bids the agents at ccia have instructions not to reveal to the Bullards what their true purpose is in buying this property because they know the Bullards you know wouldn't go for it they wouldn't sell they knew so the negotiators have these instructions okay what do they do about this well there's a couple of scenarios in one scenario the Bullard May specifically ask do you guys have any commercial plans for this other than just developing the town houses what do you say okay or they may not ask they may not bring it up they're just sort of assuming that the development will be in line with what the bullers want then do you say anything about it do you tip them off because we have these two related issues now some of my students say well look the Bullards if they're concerned about this could just put a clause in the contract to require that the property be developed in the right way that's all they have to do so there's no issue here let's go home problem is they didn't do that they're not asking for a clause in the contract you got to deal with that fact so deal with it let's deal with that fact maybe they should put a clause in the contract but they're not doing that that how do we deal with it we got to talk about negotiation in good faith negotiation what you got to do to make the negotiation work youve got to tell the other party what you're delivering what you're selling and you got to allow the party access to the the product so they can find out whether it's what they want and finally you you have to avoid deceiving the other party negotiation that simply can't work if you don't have those three conditions satisfied on the other hand you're not obligated to reveal how much you want the product or what it's worth to you so if I'm selling you a car okay I have to let you look the C over I can't deceive you about what the car is all about okay I have to tell you about the car okay but I don't have to tell you that I can't even drive so the car is worth nothing to me I don't have to tell you that in fact I shouldn't tell you that CU it would cause negotiation to break down if you think about it what happens in negotiation okay so if I'm selling you a car okay I have the lowest price that I will accept for the car if you're buying a car you have a highest price that you'll pay okay suppose I tell you my lowest price out front then you'll only offer the lowest price and suppose you tell me your highest price I'll insist on your highest price and we can never come together okay the only way we can come together is if we don't know each other's highest and lowest price then we somehow try to meet in the middle so when we make a bid or an offer that's sort of giving some some information about where our limits are but not complete information this is what negotiation always does all over the world get done a different ways but that's the basic issue you got to conceal how much you want the product yourself or you'll never come to agreement just a necessity so with that as background that suppos the Bullards are asking about you're going to build a high-rise Hotel here what do you say well one thing you might say is no or you might say we don't don't know that's just a lie it's an out andout lie you do know you do know there are plans okay lying is not generalizable it's unethical so you can't do that can you say we're not at Liberty to tell you the plans sure you can say that it's true and it's not misleading it's just simp then they can take it from there okay okay is that enough just to say we're not at Liberty to talk about the plans if you know what they want are you obligated to say something more so if they don't ask you any more about it do you tip them off so let's look at that well first of all we're not obligated to reveal to the Bullards how much we want this property in fact we're required not to reveal that so at least Prima fasi there's no obligation to tell them how we're going to use the property fact perhaps we shouldn't tell them because then they can they know you know what is worth to us but perhaps there's some deception involved here you know by not fessing up to what's going on perhaps we're deceiving them perhaps they assume that if we were going to develop the property contrary to their wishes we would say something about it if that's true if they would expect us to say something about it then we're deceiving them and that's not ethical perhaps they don't expect us perhaps they expect us to be hard no negotiator in that case there's no deception so it's a hard one to call and it depends on the precise situation it depends on a question of fact the psychological issues involved what do they expect from us are they actually being deceived so that's how you have to call that one you sort of have to be on the scene to call it there's another issue here however when you when you carry out a complex negotiation you have to form relationships with people you can't get a through a complex deal and that you sort of get to know the other guys look them in the eye go out to dinner with them for a few days so you a bond of some kind to get through this negotiation when that happens then virtue ethics comes into the picture okay if you can't look these guys in the eye you know when you know something that they don't know you know that betrays the relationship okay so if negotiation requires forming a relationship and you have to betray that relationship you know to to honor the wishes of your employer you got a virtue ethics problem you got to get out of there all right that's how I call it that's what I see the arguments coming to okay we got one more for you last one this is kico now kico Phillips so back in the 1980s kico began Drilling in the Ecuadorian rainforest they were about a third of a Consortium going out there to prospect for oil the national oil company was going to receive 80% of profits after covering investment costs okay so it's government land they're focusing on something called block 16 which is part of a national park Yuni National Park in Ecuador and here's a photo of a very beautiful waterfalls in this Tropical Park okay largely undeveloped area well there have been some environmental problems with past oil drilling you know millions of gallons of oils have been spilled waste dumped into the rivers toxic drilling mud buried all over the place conico wants to get out of this they want to address some of these problems there's also a problem involving the indigenous people who live there uh they're building access roads which encourages people to move in and occupy this land they're clearing large areas of the forest they're threatening the biodiversity and as for the people they're the huani people I think I'm saying that right uh who have had very limited contact with the outside world but now the presence of these oil Prospectors is threatening to essentially destroy their traditional Lifestyle the Sierra Club is calling this ethnos side okay well kicos has a plan at a cost of about a five or 10% increase in investment they're going to mitigate these environmental damages their argument to the stockholders is that well we may get regulations slapped on us later and it's cheaper to take care of it now so they're going to collect the Hazardous Waste take care of the drilling mud limit access by not building bridges into the area and they presented this environmental plan to the local interest groups in 1990 okay well subsequently they sold out they basically gave up uh they sold out to a Maxis Corporation who was later bought out by an Argentine firm a long tortured story they got back in Ecuador in 2006 they bought Burlington resources got drilling rights uh but then due to local opposition indigenous rights protests they uh put the drilling on hold and well that's where it stands today okay so what's the issue here what are a company's obligations to protect the environment Beyond those required by law so I'm going to suppose this some of this pollution at Le East in Ecuador is legal and what are their obligations to the people is this ethnos side now people often answer by saying you know this is the government's problem the government should step in and regulate these guys well probably they should but people will say well the government should do it therefore the company has no responsibility the problem is with the therefore if the government's not doing it's not so clear that the company has no respons ibility we have to look at that issue so we're going to look at it utilitarian test is simple in principle by prospecting for oil the company is benefiting the world they're containing cheap energy on the other hand they're creating damage you have to to do The Ledger add it up and see what the consequences are this is a question of fact not ethics we can't do this here and we also have well if I don't do it someone else will we have that argument kako doesn't play the game the other guys are playing someone else will come in and drive them out of business because they'll operate at lower costs and the results will be the same so you have to conclude that the pollution to the extent necessary to stay in business passes the utilitarian test and apparently not too much pollution is necessary to stay in business because they're willing to take on a 5% 5 to 10% investment cost increase to reduce their pollution okay but I'm going to suppose that a significant amount of poll solution is necessary to stay in business there all right and then deal with the other issues the basic problem here is that regulation in this part of the world is weak mean this kind of behavior would be illegal in much of Europe or North America what does this prove some people say Well it proves they're sort of hypocritical you know they're willing to violate their own country's regulations when they go somewhere else but yeah I don't know what to conclude from that however you may be able to construct the generalizability argument you you might argue that these companies depend on a prosperous and well-developed economy up there in North America and Europe for their profitability and these parts of the world are successful economically in part because they're not destroying their environment they have environmental regulations and if they didn't perhaps it would destroy the first world economy and this company wouldn't be able to exist as we know it so perhaps it doesn't generalize you if companies always violated these ethical rules about environmentalism they would not be able to achieve their purposes okay so you can construct that kind of argument here okay now as for ethnos side killing a culture is not the same as killing a person right the people may be may be fine you just destroyed their way of life now they're living a different way of life well the traditional point of view in the west has been that these guys ought to be assimilated into the larger culture the first school for assimilation was actually built in Carlile Pennsylvania they took native people people from North America brought their kids in dressed them up in western clothes cut their hair taught them English and insisted that they become just like Europeans so that was the view at that time today we have a different view that indigenous culture should be respected for their own sake in fact there's a very strong indigenous Rights Movement all over the world particularly in Ecuador they're among the first the traditional Western View is that agency only applies to individuals we don't have a doct about the agency of groups you can't murder a culture that's because we are traditionally focused on individualistic ethics however In some cultures in fact most cultures there's a collectivist mentality now we see ourselves as autonomous individuals but in much of the world people that see themselves primarily as a member of the family or a member of The Village rather than as an individual the unit of existence is a collective not an individual so there you know autonomy applies to the collective and not to the individual so maybe it is possible to have ethal side at least if you have a different concept of who you are as a human being this by the way is an approach one can take to cross-cultural ethics obviously a topic I can't get into right now so from this broader point of view perhaps we have a problem with ethnos sign something that Western ethics is going to have to look at in the future I think there is a virtue ethics issue here even if we can argue that the company can go ahead carry out its operations in Ecuador the people who are doing it may find this contrary to who they are they say I just don't want to be involved in this someone else would do it if I weren't here but personally this is not the contribution I want to make in my career and they may have to move out for that reason so here's a case where the individual manager may have a different set of obligations than the owners of the company okay that is my last case I have a list of references here if you want to uh pursue these ideas further and you can have a look at my website where there's a large number of materials there available uh and I hope you will not stop with this short tutorial but take this as a starting point to think uh about how ethical issues can be analyzed after all they come up every day you can get lots of practice okay thank you very much