Question: Suppose you're a young marketing professional who has just taken a new promotional campaign to market. The executive committee asks you to present a summary of the sales effect of the campaign, and you produce the graph shown in Figure 1. As shown, your campaign was just in the nick of time; sales were starting to fall the moment your campaign kicked in. After that, sales boomed. But note the vertical axis has no quantitative labels. If you add quantities, as shown in Figure 2, the performance is less impressive. It appears that the substantial growth amounts to less than 20 units. Still, the curve of the graph is impressive, and if no one does the arithmetic, your campaign will appear successful. This impressive shape is only possible, however, because Figure 2 is not drawn to scale. If you draw it to scale, as shown in Figure 3, your campaign's success is, well, problematic, at least for you. Which of these graphs do you present to the committee? Each chapter of this text includes an Ethics Guide that explores ethical and responsible behavior in a variety of MIS-related contexts. In this chapter, we'll examine the ethics of data and information. Centuries of philosophical thought have addressed the question "What is right behavior?" and we can't begin to discuss all of it here. You will learn much of it, however, in your business ethics class. For our purposes, we'll use two of the major pillars in the philosophy of ethics. We introduce the first one here and the second in Chapter 2. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant defined the categorical imperative as the principle that one should behave only in a way that
one would want the behavior to be a universal law. Stealing is not such behavior because if everyone steals, nothing can be owned. Stealing cannot be a universal law. Similarly, lying cannot be consistent with the categorical imperative because if everyone lies, words are useless. When you ask whether a behavior is consistent with this principle, a good litmus test is "Are you willing to publish your behavior to the world? Are you willing to put it on your Facebook page? Are you willing to say what you've done to all the players involved?" If not, your behavior is not ethical, at least not in the sense of Kant's categorical imperative. Kant defined duty as the necessity to act in accordance with the categorical imperative. Perfect duty is behavior that must always be met. Not lying is a perfect duty. Imperfect duty is action that is praiseworthy, but not required according to the categorical imperative. Giving to charity is an example of an imperfect duty. Kant used the example of cultivating one's own talent as an imperfect duty, and we can use that example as a way of defining professional responsibility. Business professionals have an imperfect duty to obtain the skills necessary to accomplish their jobs. We also have an imperfect duty to continue to develop our business skills and abilities throughout our careers. We will apply these principles in the chapters that follow. For now, use them to assess your beliefs about Figures 1 through 3 by answering the following questions.
1. Restate Kant's categorical imperative using your own words. Explain why cheating on exams is not consistent with the categorical imperative.
2. While there is some difference of opinion, most scholars believe that the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you") is not equivalent to Kant's categorical imperative. Justify this belief.
3. Suppose you created Figure 1 using Microsoft Excel. To do so, you keyed the data into Excel and clicked the Make Graph button (there is one, though it's not called that). Voila, Excel created Figure 1 without any labels and drawn out-of-scale as shown. Without further consideration, you put the result into your presentation.
a. Is your behavior consistent with Kant's categorical imperative? Why or why not?
b. If Excel automatically produces graphs like Figure 1, is Microsoft's behavior consistent with Kant's categorical imperative? Why or why not?
4. Change roles. Assume now you are a member of the executive committee. A junior marketing professional presents Figure 1 to the committee, and you object to the lack of labels and the scale. In response, the junior marketing professionalsays, "Sorry, I didn't know. I just put the data into Excel and copied the resulting graph." What conclusions do you, as an executive, make about the junior marketing professional in response to this statement?
5. Is the junior marketing person's response in question 4 a violation of a perfect duty? Of any imperfect duty? Of any duty? Explain your response.
6. As the junior marketing professional, which graph do you present to the committee?
7. According to Kant, lying is not consistent with the categorical imperative. Suppose you are invited to a seasonal BBQ at the department chair's house. You are served a steak that is tough, overcooked, and so barely edible that you secretly feed it to the department chair's dog (who appears to enjoy it). The chairperson asks you, "How is your steak?" and you respond, "Excellent, thank you."
a. Is your behavior consistent with Kant's categorical imperative?
b. The steak seemed to be excellent to the dog. Does that fact change your answer to a?
c. What conclusions do you draw from this example