Question

All employees are expected to act according to their organization's Code of Ethics or Conduct, based upon the values of the organization. Furthermore, product safety engineers are asked to: (a) Determine "safety" ofproducts (b) Obtain various non-govermmental agency certifications for products (c) Confirm that products comply with govenment regulations (d) Examine and test products according to various standards They are required to do this using the minimum time, money, andnumber ofproduct samples - usually at the end of the product development process, when changes are more difficult and everyone wants to ship products

Answer 1

Introduction

Business ethics is an important concept for all organizations and countries alike. Over the year’s business have transformed themselves into understanding the concepts and implementing policies that have made them the big brands that they today are.

In every organization for making profits of any kind, it is important to know, that customers have started accepting nothing but the best for themselves. For this to enable competition to be eliminated, for product managers it is getting increasingly important to design and implement techniques that allow for stringent testing before the product can be sold to the end consumer.

Brands previously have largely suffered not because they have products which are bad, but because their design has been such which has not been consumer friendly and a recall is often the end of the brands credibility.

Therefore, in order to grow, most production oriented companies follow testing of products before they are manufactured and opened for sale to the public. These tests are conducted as per industry and company standards and any deviations are checked and problems can be fixed even before the product is ready for sale.

Case Specifics:-

Scenario 1

For the purpose of this case, it is important to know the concepts of 100% product quality. The concept emerges from the changes in consumer behavior in which they expect nothing but the best to be delivered to them.

In this, it is important for the manager to be aware, that product failures can cost more to the company than making sure that the product reaches at the right time. While timing is an important consideration in making sure that a product reaches the customer at the peak of the season, a bad product will never be taken well among the consumers respectively.

Even if the boss says that he will sign off the product without proper testing of an important component, it is ones moral obligation to let higher authorities take a call on the testing of the product and keep everyone informed of a happening.

Documentation in this case, will highly help the employee in ensuring that his rights are covered for. Either the test must be scrapped if it is time taking and not worthy in the project, or it should be implemented without caring much for delivery time lines because sales is not the only thing which a company should aim for.

A proper well written mail to the boss and manager is required to clearly indicate on whose directions the testing would not happen, and that you genuinely feel that it should take place if that is the case.

It should not be left to your immediate boss to decide on a product which has huge meaning for the company and the brand value itself. Consider the question will failure cause damage to the company? The answer to this is most likely yes therefore, in being ethical all parameters must be tested if they are established. The boss cannot ignore the test and ship the product without testing it in reality no matter his designation that would be considered as unethical business behavior.

Scenario 2:-

If the product has been shipped, without your knowledge and the product has been said to have passed all tests without clearing the one which is in question as depicted, this should be clearly highlighted to the top and senior level of management so that preventive action is taken.

A firms objective is not restricted to one manager alone who may be thinking of individual and team level success. It is important to realize that the company is one team that works together a product failure could end up like a catastrophe for an organization and the boss will then have to defend a larger bubble.

Therefore, in this case, it is best to approach higher management directly keeping the production manager in loop of what has been done in the products case.

They then can decide what is best to be done to prevent any major issues and can set in policies to ensure this does not happen in the future

Please feel free to ask your doubts in the comments section