Assignment:
If you work for Apple, in the aftermath of the December 15, 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, there is a crisis in your company. The police commissioner of New York City has accused you of "corporate irresponsibility," and Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump has suggested boycotting your products.
What is to be done? How to defuse the crisis in your company? To answer those questions, it's clear that a frank conversation is crucial. And so you have organized a team meeting.
For your paper,
1) write a dialogue of that meeting as it unfolds; or
2) write the minutes of that meeting as it happened; or
3) if the "meeting" is conducted virtually by email, write a series of emails among the meeting's participants.
Here's the challenge. The senior management team is divided. The main divide is between people who take a wide view of corporate social responsibility-and think of shareholders as lenders of equity capital-and people who take a narrow view-and think of shareholders as the owners of the company. The people who take the narrow view are disciples of the economist Milton Friedman. They know his work by heart and arebelievers in Friedman's teaching that "The Social Responsibility of Business Is To Increase Its Profits." They are wont to present his argument premise by premise.
By contrast, you-the fictional you on the senior management team-take the wide view of corporate social responsibility. You think the interests of multiple stakeholders need to be taken into account. The upshot is that you and your allies on the senior management team need to argue against Friedman's argument premise by premise. Good luck!
You are running the meeting. Organize it through our four-step method for analyzing cases:
1) What are the relevant facts of the case? Also, are there facts that need still to be gathered? Just the facts; no analysis, no argumentation, etc.
2) What are the ethical problems, challenges, questions to consider?-questions of responsibilities and obligations, questions of what would be morally permissible and what morally impermissible, questions of what would be right, what wrong, what good, what bad, what virtuous, what vicious....
3) What are different, apparently defensible courses of action that might be taken?-only courses that appear permissible (that is, nothing stands in the way) or justified(that is, there is, moreover, positive moral reason to go ahead).
4) What is the most ethical choice among the different possibilities? What reasons recommend this choice over the others? Discuss/argue, pushing toward basic claims or principles.
Be sure to quote and to argue on the basis of your company's mission statement. (Look it up online.) Finally, indicate somehow, at the paper's conclusion, which side of the argument seems to you-the student you-to have the stronger position.