Ethical Behavior

10 Pages 2493 Words

basis.

The second mitigating 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 depa...