Ba Little Enough or Too Much

Yaodong Sun

BA 3102 John

Analysis Paper #1

Feb.24. 2015

Little Enough or Too Much

  The case I chose from the case folder is “Little Enough or Too Much”. This case describes a serious ethical dilemma. A recently hired manager, Juan, has to deal with an environmental issue as a result of launching a new product. X Chemical Company developed a new industrial lubricant that can be produced at a very low cost and benefit for the long-term business. Manager Juan has the responsibility to oversee the construction of production facilities to develop a new product in the Chemical Company. However, the manufacturing plant was built near the East River and X Chemical has obtained the permission from government agency to dump waste material into river. New product will need an additional stage to process, which would cause excess waste so that environmental group would stop the chemical company to reform their process. Equally important, the new stage would require a temporary suspension of product processing that may lose their customers. If I were the manager as Juan is in the chemical company, there are two primary decision options I would make. The first option is to produce a new product disposing additional waste material into the river, but we need to negotiate with government agency to apply the permission. The second option is to stop producing new products and keeping to produce the old products.  Below is a stakeholder analysis that lists the decision of each stakeholder and indication of how deeply it would affect them by using plusses and minuses.

Stakeholders                                     keep producing same products      Produce new products

Stockholders                                       ++                                                  -

Employees                                          -                                                  ++

Customers                                           +                                                 -

Community of chemical company      -                                                 +

Environment group                              + +                                                --

Manager, Juan                                     -                                                  -

Government agency                             +                                               --

  For the stockholders, keeping to produce the same products was given a “++”, which is the positive aspect compared to the “-”of producing new products. This represents that stockholders can hold a consistent benefit from the chemical company if they do not change the process module. They will not take any risk if the new products will not reach their expectation. The cost of building the additional process will cause suspension that is the reason I put “-” for producing new products. In contrast, the new products have been tested and showed high quality with a very low cost to produce compared to competitors. There will be more benefit in the long run. The analysis of employees working at the Chemical Company will have more advantages of producing new products than continuing same products, so I put “++” on producing new products side. If the new products get succeed, every employee will get sizable bonuses, according to the company’s profit sharing plan. Moreover, increasing job opportunities will also be a positive thing for all employees. For the customers, I gave “- ” for producing new products for the reason that building the additional process would require interruptions. As a result, they will switch to competitors. Otherwise, the customers do not have much influence on making decisions. The community of the chemical company would increase the amount of employment if they started producing new products. On the other hand, the serious pollution will have deep negative impacts on the local community. Environmental groups do not like to extend the permission of releasing waste in water, which will obviously harm the environment. Juan, who is the manager in new product development of chemical company, has “-” on both options. Because Owen who is the Plant Supervisor does not support him to implement this new product, he will probably get trouble with that. As the government agency, I gave “- -” on the side of producing new products because the chemical company need is releasing more waste than they applied for because the government granted too much. For Juan, the decision maker of developing new products, there will be a heavy burden on his shoulder holding their necessary responsibility of any issues while producing new products. Otherwise, he also holds the burden. If they keep the same products, he predicts the chemical company will encounter a business dilemma in the long run. Eventually, my decision is to persistently keep the same products rather than developing new products in terms of the above consideration, like building additional processing department which would reduce waste only, but require costly interruption of business.

In the Deckop Chapter, there are three main ethical perspectives: utilitarianism, profit maximization and universalism. Referring to the utilitarianism concept, it is pretty helpful to list the stakeholder and analysis the different results. Utilitarian analysis believes that the potential outcomes of a decision should be analyzed to see who benefits and who is harmed. The decision that results in the most total benefit compared to harm is the best decision.  Based on the method we discussed in class, we add up the plusses and minuses from the stakeholder analysis so that the utilitarian result will come out. Looking back of the list, we have 6 “+” on the side of keeping to produce same products, instead, there are 3 “+” on the side of producing new products. Therefore, entirely checking marks for two different options the chemical company may implement, the better approach is keeping the old products instead of developing new products.