Business Ethics Bottled Water Costs Term Paper

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Explore the ethical issues that arise due to Dr. Moriarty's recommendation of the OMG treatment option.

Clearly there is a conflict of interest in Dr. Moriarty prescribing a treatment he has received Drug Company funding to validate, promote and publish on. It is quite understandable that Ned would be troubled by the recommendation. There is the obvious conflict of interest issue to resolve, yet with only a single paper published on the procedure and the obliteration of his immune system and the replacement of bone marrow, the risks are just too high to go forward with the OMG treatment option. The entire procedure, from its nascent status and the role of Dr. Moriarty in its initial research and now prescribing it to the high level of risk to Ned's immune system all point to the need to consider second opinions. In addition to all these factors, Ned does not know if the ICBiNB treatment was presented as a "loss leader" to make the OMG treatment even the more attractive. Ned understandably could feel manipulated in this situation. The best ethical approach to resolving this problem is to seek second opinions from other physicians and not have any serious work done by Dr. Moriarty.

Mini-Case - 50 Marks - 3 to 5 Pages

China is emerging as a major automobile manufacturer, yet the country's manufacturers seem to be either unable or unwilling, to develop their own designs. BMW is just the latest company to complain that a Chinese automaker has copied designs. Examine the ethical implications of the actions of Chinese automakers.

Do you feel that the designs are merely the result of inspiration or are they an attempt to confuse the public?

What effects will the actions of these companies have on the future of Chinese automakers?

The ethics of Chinese automakers to blatantly copy designs and features of westernized cars is a living example of how a lack of ethics cripples and severally hurts the offender. For these Chinese companies they are losing valuable time in devising their own designs, establishing their own systems for collecting the unmet needs of customers, and working with distribution channels to also understand how the deficiencies in American and Japanese distribution practices globally leaves significant opportunity for Chinese companies to capitalize on these weaknesses. Yet the Chinese auto makers don't see any of these opportunities for growing their companies; they react to global competition by imitating only the facade or appearance, not taking the time to understand the intricacies of how the many sourcing, supply chain, development, selling and services systems need to be revamped to gain greater competitive strength. The myopic nature of Chinese car manufacturers' management to focus just on the veneer and model designs of cars is to completely miss the point of global competition. Their lack of ethics keeps them blind to the true competitive strengths of the auto manufacturers they compete with. The lack of appreciation for the Toyota Production System (TPS), the most state-of-the-art supply chain and procurement system in the auto industry is a case in point. Toyota has turned their TPS into a learning eco-system where suppliers learn from each other and from buyers on how to better integrate processes into production centers. Toyota is innovating processes, while Chinese manufacturers are duplicating only the evidence of a process, not the process itself. The cruel irony for Chinese manufacturers is that the focus purely on the evidence of an effective process in the form of an imitated product design just makes the gap between initial supply coordination for parts, through production, to delivery all the more tenuous and flimsy in execution.

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The lack of ethics in Chinese auto manufacturers then has become so pervasive that they are actually dissipating and wasting valuable time they could otherwise be using to learn how to modify common existing processes common to all manufacturers to their specific needs. The critical need for supply chain coordination is a case in point. In a sense the massive amounts of time Chinese manufacturers are wasting imitating and unethically copying the designs of the worlds' top manufacturers are costing them the most expensive resource of all: time.

The ethical cost to Chinese manufacturers in terms of lost time learning how to truly create and sustain design excellence supported by the myriad of processes required to create world-class automobiles is the price they are paying for the "here and now" immediate gratification of showing low-cost BMW and Mercedes-Benz knock-offs on the floors of auto shows worldwide. As the auto industry has more than its share of cynics and is in general a very vocal, very critical audience, the Chinese continue to tarnish their own brands through the cheap emulation of expensive German automobiles. No one in the auto industry press believes the knock-offs much less prospective customers in Europe of the U.S. Of any quality That's the tragedy of companies that attempt to get to an end result through unethical means without doing the hard work of figuring out the processes to get to their desired objectives: they fail often and fail very publicly. No one will buy one of the Chinese knock-offs precisely because there are no supporting processes in place to support them. Who would want to have one of their cars if there is no service organization standing behind them? No one. The Chinese automakers are actually playing out a great ethics lessons of the 21st century by only working to deliver products that meet a veneer or facade and not focusing on the underlying systems and processes essential for delivering exceptional products. Ultimately the massive shortcuts Chinese manufacturers continue to attempt to take to gain acceptance in global auto markets will backfire on them as the lack of ethics will damage their brands, but also lead to ignorance of the very processes they must rely on to compete on in successive product generations. In a sense, ethics becomes the barometer of a company's ability to compete for the long-term, and the 40-50 years that Chinese auto manufacturers will most likely require to eventually learn to be process-driven and not imitative-driven are going to be painful ones for their auto industry. If any major lesson emerges from the Chinese auto industry it is truly that strong ethics make for strong companies, and a healthy respect of what matters most, which is interpreting processes and making them competitive advantages. Yet the lack of ethics in Chinese auto manufacturers blinds them to this fact, and that is the biggest tragedy from a lack of ethics in their auto industry.

As has been mentioned throughout this response, the future of Chinese automakers is fraught with challenge and even greater challenges that their lack of concentration on what matters most, namely the originating of and perfecting processes that will allow them to have unique competitive advantages, is being lost in the effort to imitate and mimic expensive American and German automobiles. The lack of ethics and the reliance purely on the facade of the vehicles themselves at the expense of the supporting processes just postpones the inevitable hard work of actually creating their own unique supporting production, delivery and service systems as well. In short, the lack of ethics and the lost time that Chinese….....

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