Ethics In Business

9 Pages 2133 Words

ting factor is the duress or threats that an employee
might suffer if they do not follow through with their assignment. After the
bogus testing was completed in the National Semiconductor labs, the
documentation department also had to falsify documents stating that the parts
had surpassed the governmental testing standards. From a legal and ethical
standpoint, both the testers and the writers of the reports were merely acting
as agents on direct orders from a superior. This was also the case when the
plant in Singapore refused to falsify the documents and were later falsified by
the employees at the have California plant before being submitted to the
approval committees (Velazquez, 53). The writers of the reports were well aware
of the situation yet they acted in this manner on the instruction of a
supervisor. Acting in an ethical manner becomes a secondary priority in this
type of environment. As stated by Alan Reder, . . . if they [the employees]
feel they will suffer retribution, if they report a problem, they arent too
likely to open their mouths. (113). The workers knew that if the reports were
not falsified they would come under questioning and perhaps their employment
would go into jeopardy. Although working under these conditions does not fully
excuse an employees from moral fault, it does start the divulging process for
determining the order of the chain of command of superiors and it helps to
narrow down the person or department that issued the original request for the
unethical acts.
The third mitigating factor is one that perhaps encompasses the majority
of the employees in the National Semiconductor case. We have to balance the
direct involvement that each employee had with the defective parts. Thus, it has
to be made clear that many of the employees did not have a direct duty with the
testing departments or with the parts that eventually failed. Even employees, or
sub-contractors, that were...