Question

The year is 2020. You just got your dream job as a stock broker on Wall Street. They gave you a nice signing bonus and you are making a lot of money. You also have the opportunity to make a large year-end bonus if you meet your sales quota. But your Boss has a reputation for firing new employees that don’t reach those sales goals. Timing could not have been better because your student loans are thru the roof and your parents were just threatening to kick you out of the basement. You buy yourself a couple new suits, rent your apartment in Manhattan and show up 30 minutes early to work ready to start your career. Your Boss, Mr. Money bags, has you start cold calling people to get them to buy stock in TEXLA corporation. He says that TEXLA is a great new company that is working on a new drug that might cure cancer. He failed to tell you that the President of Texla is his brother-in-law. You start making sales calls and find out that the easiest people to convince to buy the stock are senior citizens. The first year you make reach your sales quota and receive a 1 Million Dollars bonus which you immediately invest in TEXLA stock because it has been doing so well. You also invested all of your parent’s retirement savings in TEXLA. Later that year you accidently receive an email that was addressed to Mr. Moneybags from his brother-in-law the President of TEXLA which informed him that the testing shows their new drug actually makes cancer worse. You are the only one who has this information and know that once this information hits the internet the value of the stock will drop to ZERO but no one will ever find out that you have this inside information. You also remembered from your awesome business law class that it is illegal to use “Inside Information” to benefit yourself or your clients. Your Boss will lose his investment, you will lose your investment, your parent’s retirement savings will be lost along with all of those senior citizens that listened to your advice. You only have an hour before the news will hit the press which means you can’t call everyone. What do you do????? Identify the ethical dilemma(s) in this situation. a. Use an ethical decision making model to determine the right course of action to take in this situation.

Answer 1

The ethical dilemma in this situation is whether you should engage in insider trading to protect your investments or to ignore the possibility of insider trading and see all your investments turn to naught after the news with regards to TEXLA becomes public. The dilemma for you is towards whom do you have a greater responsibility – towards the law of the land (which prohibits insider trading) or towards your parent whose savings you have invested in TEXLA’a stock.

The ethical decision making model that will be used to determine the right course of action in this situation will be the model of ‘moral absolutism’. As per this model the ethical dilemma will be approached with a deontological framework and hence rules will be prioritized and consequences will not be given much attention. The rule is that insider trading is illegal and hence the consequences of losing all the investments will be ignored. Thus under the model of moral absolutism the ethical dilemma will be resolved by not indulging in insider trading and letting my investment get diluted as the news of TEXLA becomes public.