Business Ethics
Part -1:
Select the single best answer for each question or statement, then transfer your answers to the appropriate scan sheet provided.
1. Which is NOT a requirement for a facility to be considered a sweatshop?
a. unmitigated health and safety hazards
b. high temperatures
c. poor working conditions
d. unfair wages
2. Which organizational layer can be said to generate specific plans and instructions from broad directions?
a. operating layer
b. middle management
c. top management
d. none of the above
3. Whistle blowing can have what consequence?
a. being ostracized at work
b. loss of employment
c. negative reputation
d. all of the above
4. How have most businesses adapted to information technology developments?
a. They have become larger and more unwieldy.
b. They have become more hierarchical.
c. They have become flatter, smaller, and more nimble.
d. They have become more profitable.
5. How much of General Electric's revenue is from outside the United States?
a. none
b. one quarter
c. almost half
d. more than half
6. UNOCAL worked with the Burmese army to push the pipeline using
a. low-wage workers
b. forced labor
c. unethical land reclamation schemes
d. none of the above
7. How did Eli Lilly test its pharmaceuticals?
a. by recruiting individuals from a wide swathe of society
b. by recruiting the homeless
c. by recruiting prisoners
d. by recruiting middle-class workers
8. Which philosopher's theory of moral virtue states that virtues are habits that enable a person to live according to reason, by habitually choosing the mean between extremes in actions and emotions?
a. Immanuel Kant
b. Pincoffs
c. Aristotle
d. St. Thomas Aquinas
9. What is the "hardwired" Intention Principle?
a. Harming by action is worse than harming by omission.
b. Harming by omission is worse than harming by ignorance.
c. Harming by physical contact is worse than without physical contact.
d. Harming anyone for any reason is wrong.
10. What is the main purpose of rights?
a. to provide everyone with necessities such as food and water
b. to provide justice and fairness to all
c. to enable individuals to choose freely and to protect those choices
d. to keep people from harming each other
11. Which of the following is an ethical rule governing contracts?
a. The contract must be fair.
b. The contract must be enforceable.
c. The contract must be specific.
d. The contract must not be immoral.
12. According to the International Labor organization, how many children are estimated to be working today?
a. 500,000
b. 13 million
c. 122 million
d. 218 million
13. During the financial crisis in 2008, George W. Bush asked U.S. Congress to pass legislation to create a Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in the amount of
a. $1 trillion
b. $90 billion
c. $80 billion
d. $70 billion
14. According to Marx, what are the only sources of income in a capitalist system?
a. sale of one's own labor
b. sale of one's means of production and private property
c. sale of one's labor and ownership of means of production
d. profiting from the labor of others and ownership of means of production
15. What did Marx believe to be the actual function of government?
a. encourage nationalism
b. protect the interests of the ruling class
c. spread wealth within the borders of the country
d. set up a system of labor
16. China and Singapore are examples of what type of economies?
a. ones that favor free markets and globalization
b. ones that favor individual property rights
c. ones that favor government intervention
d. ones that favor competition
17. In the ADM case, what did ADM and the other companies do to fix the market prices for lysine?
a. They bullied the buyers into accepting a specific price.
b. They agreed on the price for which the companies sold the product, and they agreed on limits of production.
c. They each agreed to produce only a certain amount of lysine per year.
d. They agreed on the price for which the companies would sell the product, but they were free to produce as much as they liked.
18. Which of the following is a characteristic of a perfectly free economy?
a. There are only a few buyers and sellers who have a substantial share of the market.
b. Goods being sold in the market are extremely similar to one another.
c. The government regulates prices of goods being bought and sold in the market.
d. None of the above
19. Which view regarding oligopolies argues that oligopolies stifle competition and should be broken up?
a. the antitrust view
b. the do-nothing view
c. the regulation view
d. none of the above
20. Which of the following would negatively impact the effectiveness of market theory consumer protection?
a. low prices
b. monopolies
c. high prices
d. many competitors
21. Which of the following would be considered a deceptive advertisement?
a. one in which the author accidentally includes information he or she knows to be false
b. one in which the author purposely includes information he or she knows to be false
c. one in which the author includes false information that is obviously false to the audience
d. all of the above
22. The social cost view improves utility in what way?
a. improves employment through greater manufacturing output
b. decreases workplace accidents through government regulation
c. internalizes the costs of injuries and accidents to the manufacturer
d. all of the above
23. Which of these is NOT a view on the duty of a business to its customers?
a. duty of care view
b. social costs view
c. contract view
d. normative view
24. According to a 2001 study, how many tons of toxic pesticides do U.S. companies export to other nations every hour?
a. 1 ton
b. 90 tons
c. 45 tons
d. 200 tons
25. Which, on average, will have the largest negative impact on expected income?
a. being female
b. being Hispanic
c. being black
d. being male
Part -2:
Select the single best answer for each question or statement, then transfer your answers to the appropriate scan sheet provided.
1. Which of the following is false?
a. Traditionally male-dominated professions have lower mean salaries than non-gendered positions.
b. Whites consistently have the lowest portion of their population living in poverty.
c. Construction and extraction is the most equitable between the sexes of the industries surveyed.
d. Individuals with professional degrees earn more, on average, than those with doctorates.
2. Which is the best description of intentional discrimination?
a. the conscious and deliberate discriminatory act on an individual
b. the discrimination brought about by the unconscious biases of an individual
c. the acts of discrimination made by the few heads of an organization
d. the discrimination that results from the routines and processes of large groups.
3. Which of the following is one definition of the term ethics?
a. the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group
b. the process of adhering to all laws and regulations
c. an alternate term for morality
d. a term describing why people are good or evil
4. Which of the following is NOT a key consideration for an employer when impinging on an employee's privacy?
a. relevance
b. consent
c. methods
d. utility
5. Being offered a gift during contract negotiations is likely an example of what?
a. subjective conflict of interest
b. objective conflict of interest
c. commercial bribe
d. commercial extortion
6. The term for the worldwide process by which the economic and social systems of nations become connected is called
a. connectivity
b. internationalization
c. multinationalism
d. globalization
7 Which of the following ethical issues did NOT arise as a result of the Industrial Revolution?
a. worker exploitation in factories
b. environmental damage
c. manipulation of the new financial markets
d. customer privacy issues
8. What happened when Stalney Milgram tested subjects' willingness to follow the orders of an authority figure to give electric shocks to someone else?
a. No subjects were willing to harm other people.
b. One-third of subjects were willing to harm other people.
c. Two-thirds of subjects were willing to harm other people.
d. 90% of the subjects were willing to harm other people.
9. What does rule utilitarianism look at?
a. the amount of utility produced by a particular action
b. the moral rules of a particular action
c. the people affected by a particular action
d. the legality and legal rules of a particular action
10. What type of justice involves the imposition of penalties?
a. retributive justice
b. distributive justice
c. reparative justice
d. compensatory justice
11. Why did the Ford managers decide not to fix the gas tank on the Pinto?
a. because they believed it was best for society as a whole
b. because they did not have enough time or budget
c. to save money on the cost of fixing the tanks
d. because they were acting in self-interest
12. Karl Marx offers the most critical view of modern private property and free market institutions. Marx claims that free-market capitalism necessarily produces
a. extremes of inefficiency
b. extremes of efficiency
c. extremes of equality
d. extremes of inequality
13. What is the most important concept in international trade theory?
a. free trade
b. absolute advantage
c. comparative advantage
d. means of production
14. So-called primitive societies used economic systems based on
a. small business organization
b. tradition-based societies
c. barter systems
d. none of the above
15. In a perfectly free economy, all buyers and sellers are what?
a. utility users
b. utility creators
c. utility maximizers
d. utility diminishers
16. When a company sells a buyer certain goods only on condition that the buyer also purchases other goods from the firm, this is known as
a. manipulation of supply
b. exclusive dealing arrangements
c. price discrimination
d. tying arrangement
17. Which of the following is the term for a situation in which firms limit their output?
a. market allocation
b. bid rigging
c. exclusive dealing arrangements
d. manipulation of supply
18. What is one reason why businesses were able to ignore their effects on the environment for so long?
a. Businesses tend to view the effects of their activities as negligible and ignore them.
b. Governments had no way to stop them.
c. Businesses did not know they were polluting.
d. Businesses used bribes for many years as incentives to government to ignore the effects.
19. Ozone depletion is a serious threat to our survival; which gases are extremely harmful to the ozone layer?
a. carbon dioxide
b. nitrogen
c. chlorofluorocarbons
d. hydrocarbons
20. is privacy with respect to a person's inner life. This includes the person's thoughts and plans, personal beliefs and values, feelings, and wants.
a. Physical privacy
b. Psychological privacy
c. Personal privacy
d. Spiritual privacy
21. Even though advertising issues are complex, they must include
a. social effects
b. effects on desire
c. effects on belief
d. all of the above
22. Which of the following is NOT a basic element of discrimination in employment?
a. It must be an action by a person in a position of authority.
b. It must be a decision not based on individual merit.
c. The decision must derive from racial or sexual prejudice.
d. The decision must have a harmful impact on the interest of employees.
23. Which of the following forms of employee discrimination is NOT legally protected in the United States?
a. discrimination by ability
b. discrimination by sex
c. discrimination by nationality
d. discrimination by race
24. Risks are sometimes unavoidable and acceptable, as long as
a. employees are not coerced
b. employees are fully compensated for assuming them and they do so freely and knowingly
c. no one else has the expertise to do the work
d. all of the above
25. Which of the following is a valid consideration for determining a fair wage?
a. the firm's profits
b. previous wage of the applicant
c. gender of the applicant
d. the nationality of the applicant