Other areas of Business Responsibility

Product Quality – product measures up to the claims made about it and to reasonable
consumer expectations.
 Express Warranties – includes character, assurances of product on warrant cards, labels,
wrappers, and packages or in the advertising of the product.
 Implied Warranties – a product is fit for its ordinary, intended use.
 Merchantability – guarantees that it will be of passable quality or suitable for the ordinary
purpose for which it is used.
Deception and Unfairness in Advertising
Deceptive Techniques
 Ambiguity – words that can be understood in two or more ways can be deceiving.
 Exaggeration – making claims unsupported by evidence.
 Puffery – supposedly harmless use of superlatives and subjective praise in
advertisement.
 Psychological Appeal – persuasive effort aimed primarily at emotion, not on reason.

Pricing – the use of psychological pricing is closely related to the problem of pricing branded
products higher than generic product that are otherwise indistinguishable.
- Manipulative pricing such as surcharges, ATM withdrawal fees, promotional pricing.
- Consumers pay more assuming that the brand name or the higher price implies better
quality.
Labeling and Packaging
- Business’s general responsibility to provide clear, accurate, and adequate information
applies to labeling and packaging.
- A product’s label and package remain the consumers’ primary source of product
information.
- Even when product label provides pertinent information, they are more difficult to
understand or even misleading, and what they omit may even be more important.
Ads directed at children – kids are the most pure consumers, they tend to interpret the ad
literally and are infinitely open.
Consumer needs – some advertisements concede that images of glamour, sex, or adventure
sells products, and argue that these images are what we want.
 Ethics arise at Different Levels

Personal level – includes challenges we face in our personal lives that are generally outside the
context of our employment. (I.e. downloading music although it is someone else’s property.)
Organizational level - confronts ethical issues in their roles as managers or employees. Carry
consequences for the company’s reputation and success. (I.e. over report the actual time,
hoping to get overtime pay.)

Social Responsibilities: The Workplace Issues

Hiring – employers will hire people who will enable the organization to produce the products.
Principal steps: Screening, Testing, Interviewing
 Screening – to attract qualified applicants who have a good chance of succeeding. Ensures a
pool of competent candidate.
 Job Description – lists all pertinent details about the content of a job, including its
duties, responsibilities, etc.
 Job Specification – it describes the qualifications on employer needs such as skills,
background, and education.
 Testing – designed to measure the applicant’s verbal, quantitative, and logical skills.
 Aptitude Tests – helps determine an applicant’s suitability for a job.
 Interviewing – should free from unconscious biases, stereotypes, etc.
 Situational Interview – predicts future job performance more accurately than an
ordinary interview.
Promotion – moving someone to a higher rank
 Things to consider
 Seniority – longevity on a job with a firm.
 Inbreeding – promoting exclusively from within the firm.
 Nepotism – showing favoritism to relatives and friends.
Dismissing Employees
 Firing-for-cause dismissal
 Termination – employee’s poor performance
 Layoff – refers to temporary unemployment (subject to recall)
 Position elimination – designates the permanent elimination of job as a result of work
reduction, plant crossing, etc.
Living Wages – the amount of money a full-time employee needs to afford the basic life
necessities.

Purpose of doing a business if it is not profitable?

 Discovery – rooted in intuition that life is a kind of adventure

 Excellence – implies standards and perform the belief that excellent performance
represents supreme good.
 Altruism – serving customers beyond standard obligation.
 Heroism – demonstrates achievement, often with a charismatic and visionary leader.

a. Motivate and unify management and staff.

b. Customers will have more to buy into and engage with.
c. Encourage loyalty to both staff and customers.
d. Encourage a strong culture within a business.

WITHOUT A CLEAR FOUNDATION, A BUSINESS CAN NEVER BE TRULY STRATEGIC

The Boundary Spanning Leaders: Connecting, building Trust

 Christ Ernst – CEO of the Center for Creative Leadership, is a boundary spanning leader can
use a number of different connecting tactics to link people build trust.
 Daniel Sutton – European director of CSR (Customer Service Relations) for global oil and
energy. He is the creator of a plan that would reduce greenhouse emission.
 Rob Cross – leading expert in the area of organizational network analysis, demonstrates
that the highest performing leaders tend to share three important characteristics. He
invests in relationship that cross boundaries and creates trusting high-quality relationship.