Kiki was a bright individual who was being groomed for the Controller's position in a medium-sized manufacturing firm. After her first year as Assistant Controller, the officers of the firm were starting to include her in major company functions. For instance, today she was attending the monthly financial statement summary given at a prestigious consulting firm. During the meeting, Kiki was intrigued at how all the financial data she had been accumulating was transformed by the consultant into revealing charts and graphs.
Kiki was generally optimistic about the session and the company's future until the consultant started talking about the new manufacturing plant the company was adding to the current location and the costs per unit of the chemically plated products it produced. At that time, Barb (the President) and Julia (the chemical engineer) started talking about waste treatment and disposal problems. Julia mentioned that the current waste facilities were not adequate to handle the waste products that would be created by the "ultramodern" new plant in a manner that would meet the industry's fairly high standards, although they could still comply with federal standards. Kiki's boss, Anna, noted that the estimated cost per unit would be increased if the waste treatment facilities were upgraded according to recent industry standards. While industry standards were presently more stringent than federal regulations, environmentalists were pressuring strongly for improving regulations at the federal level. Barb mentioned that since their closest competitor did not have the waste treatment facilities that already existed at their firm, she was not in favor of any more expenditures in this area. Most managers at this meeting resoundingly agreed with Barb, and business continued on to another topic.
Kiki did not hear a word during the rest of the meeting. She kept wondering how the company could possibly have such a casual attitude toward the environment. Yet she did not know if, how, or when she could share her opinion. Soon she started reflecting on whether this was the right firm for her.
In your analysis make sure you complete the following steps:
1. Identify who is affected (who is the protagonist and who are the primary stakeholders);
2. Identify the ethical dilemma (what are the ethical issues);
3. State the options available (what could the protagonist do); and
4. Construct an argument for action based upon ethical principlesandjustify your decision regarding the dilemma (what should the protagonist do and why).