Running Head: OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT INTEGRATION 1

Christian Worldview: Operations Management Integration

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Christian Worldview: Operations Management Integration

Introduction

Companies are sometimes faced with situations where they have to make a choice

between two decisions that are of moral necessity. However, choosing one side results in the

transgression of the other side thus making it difficult to settle on one choice. In this case,

Starbucks, Motor City, and McDonald’s are faced with a choice of two options that are of moral

imperative. The paper describes the steps that the companies should take in addressing the

situation both from a moral perspective and from Christian worldview,

Summary of the Ethical Dilemma

Three companies, McDonald’s, Motor City, and Starbucks, are faced with n ethical

dilemma of whether they should continue serving hot drinks to their customers or quit due to the

number of lawsuits that are going through in the courts against them. McDonald’s was recently

sued by an 80-year old woman that had burned herself after she spilled a cup of scalding coffee

on herself. McDonald’s was sued by the woman and had to pay a fine of $640,000 despite

having their product served to the product specifications and quality. Starbucks and Motor City

have been in the same scenarios in the past where they had to compensate customers for burning

themselves with their drinks after they spilled it on themselves.

Are McDonald’s, Motor City and Starbucks at Fault?

In my opinion, the three companies are not at fault for the incidences of burning that

occur to their customers due to the hot drinks that they serve. This is despite the verdicts made

by the courts going against the companies. When manufacturing a product, a company looks at

the general utility of the product or service both to its customers and from a business sense
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(Baron & Baron, 2003). In this case, the three companies provide utility to their customers by

serving them hot coffee and they gain through earning for themselves profits. Many of their

customers prefer their coffee because it is served hot. Even the customers that get accidently

burned by the drinks go for them because they are served hot. The drinks, therefore provide

utility to their customers when they are hot. When the companies shift and start serving the

drinks cold or warm, they will lose most of their customers due to failure to fulfil their needs. It

means they will not be providing utility to them. At the same time, the company profit levels will

go down due to loss of customers. The workers in the companies will have to be retrenched.

Utilitarianism provides that an action should be judged as right or wrong based on the

total sum of pleasures that it provides to the general public, minus the suffering of anyone (Mill,

2016). In this case, the three companies provide utility by serving their products when hot. Their

products have become popular due to the current product specification of being served hot.

Stopping to serve hot drinks on the basis of suffering of a few individuals will bring greater harm

than serving the product when hot. By stopping the service or changing the product specification,

the customers will not get the value of the product due to reduced quality, the company will lose

its earnings due to low sales, the workers may have a reduced wage or maybe retrenched, and in

the end they will not be able to provide for their families and themselves. The utility of the

product thus overweighs the suffering of a few people. The companies are, therefore, not at fault

for serving the hot drinks.

How do Quality and Ethics Enter into these Cases?

The companies that provide services and products need to establish a standard of quality

and make sure that they meet those standards whenever they are serving their customers.

Therefore, the issue of quality comes into these case for purposes of ascertaining whether the
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products served by the three companies are of the standards that satisfy the utility of the

customers (Vaughn, 2015). For example, in the case of McDonald’s, the firm upholds that its

product was up to the product specifications and quality because the product has been marketed

as such. The popularity of the McDonald’s coffee is due to its unusual hotness that supersedes

other drinks served in other restaurants. The product is marketed as being served at temperatures

that are at 180 degrees Celsius. By altering the product specification, the company will be

interfering with the quality since the customers who come to purchase the product will not find it

unusually hot than in other restaurants. They can equally sue the company for marketing a

product with wrong product specifications. The advertising rules warn against false

advertisement. The company may also lose it customers who may feel that the quality of the

coffee has gone down.

The issue of ethics also comes in when discussing the products because the products are

supposed to satisfy the utility of the customer. The product marketed should bring no harm to the

health of the customer. In this case, the company has marketed the coffee as hot and thus serves

it as such. It means that the companies are not shortchanging their customers since they are

providing them with the product as marketed. If they market the coffee as hot and then they serve

it warm, the company would be violating ethics (Cox, 2017). The customers would then have a

right to sue them for selling them a substandard product. On the other hand, if they provide the

customers with a product that harms them out of rightful use, the companies can be accused for

going against ethics and can subsequently be sued for damages. Therefore, the issue of ethics and

quality is of great significance when discussing products and services (Shaw, 1999). The

companies have to provide the products or services as marketed, otherwise they would be

engaging in false marketing. McDonald’s company has thus to emphasize that it served the
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customer coffee as per the product specifications and quality. It implies that it did not violate any

rule. If the product would have been placed into its rightful use, the customer would have gained

utility.

Christian Worldview

When examined from a Christian Worldview, the outcomes of the issue take another

route altogether. The old woman should not have sued the company because it was her

responsibility to ensure that she puts the hot coffee in its rightful use. Another similar example

would be that the woman buys the coffee and then trips on a rock and falls down with the same

circumstances. She would not blame the rock but herself for failure to be observant. Blaming the

rock would not make any sense. From a Christian perspective, it is important for people to

practice love, forgiveness, and act in the same way as Jesus. The book of Ephesians 4: 31-32

states that “31Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every

form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in

Christ God forgave you.” The verse mentions that it is important to forgive just as Christ forgave

the humanity. It also mentions that it is important to put away malice. In this case, the woman is

clearly asking the company to bear responsibility for her fault (Stone, 1998). She had gone for

the coffee due to its specification and quality. However, on the occurrence of the accident in

which she burns herself, she wants somebody else to bear the responsibility. The case of the

woman and McDonald’s can also be analyzed from the lens of Proverbs 28:13 that states that

“Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them

finds mercy.” In this case, the woman is clearly concealing her mistake by blaming the company

and seeking for compensation when the mistake is clearly hers. The Christian view demands for

taking responsibility for one mistakes. By taking responsibility and not hiding, God forgives our
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sins. The woman should confess her sin of seeking unwarranted benefit from the company by not

taking the responsibility for the accident. If the coffee would have been used in the right way,

she would have enjoyed the benefits like millions of other customers who purchase the product.
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References

Baron, D. P., & Baron, D. P. (2003). Business and its environment (p. 2). Upper Saddle River,

NJ: Prentice Hall.

Cox, K. (2017). The Stench of Frivolous Lawsuits (and Human Waste). Marriott Student

Review, 1(3), 7.

Mill, J. S. (2016). Utilitarianism. In Seven Masterpieces of Philosophy (pp. 337-383). Routledge.

New International Version Bible. Ephesians 4: 31-32 and Proverbs 28:13.

Shaw, W. (1999). Contemporary ethics: Taking account of utilitarianism. Wiley-Blackwell.

Stone, D. (1998). Christian views on ethics. Christian Medical Fellowship. Retrieved from

http://www.doctorluke.org/topic-admin/assets/manuscript/1365175956_03_CH-

VIEWS.PDF

Vaughn, L. (2015). Doing ethics: Moral reasoning and contemporary issues. WW Norton &

Company.