Ethical Scenarios

As I have just finished delivering a pair of lectures on professional ethics I have decided to post up some of the scenarios that I ended the lectures with. I gave these to the students to get them to engage with some moral reasoning. Have a look and tell me what you think. What is correct moral course of action, if any?

Also, tell me if you think they are weighted well, i.e. the answer is not so obvious.

Environment vs. Jobs

You are the CEO of a metal-processing plant. You have recently become aware of the massive negative environmental impact of your business and wish to make the factory cleaner and greener. There is also some consensus amongst the company’s shareholders that greener is better, so long as it does not hurt the bottom line. This consensus is by no means binding (i.e. it’s not imperative that this is done, merely something preferred if it was). Through new technology that can be bought through government subsidies that are calculated to be cost-effective in the long term, you realise that you can cut the factory’s pollution by 35%. However, this will come at a cost. As most of the new equipment is automatic you will only require 40% of the present workforce, meaning that if the company goes green they will have to sack 200 workers (the cost-benefit analysis economically justifying the change-over has taken into account that there will only be 40% of the current employees, to keep all employees will make the company lose money). At the cost of jobs for a cleaner environment should you do it? Why?

Same scenario, however, the move to the new equipment is not for environmental reasons, though there will some environmental benefit, but instead for financial reasons. What should you do? And why?

Bridge Building

You are a civil engineer working to build a much-needed bridge that is to replace a previous bridge that collapsed six months earlier due to a structure failure during an earthquake. A colleague of yours, Jim, also an engineer working on the same project has a confidential conversation with you about his belief that the type of cement your company is using is not strong enough and will likely lead to structural failure sometime in the future. You have no expertises in the area and cannot be sure of Jim’s claim, however, you know that is very sincere in his concern. Jim has asked you not to mention his concern, as he is worried about the repercussions. You nonetheless attempt to make the concern known without ever mentioning Jim’s name. You exhaust the correct channels within the company to highlight the concern about this type of concrete and at every point have been assured that it perfectly safe, however you are not sure whether to believe this or not.

What do you do? And Why? If you wish to take this concern any further you will need to mention Jim’s name and will need to make the concern known outside the company, thereby violating company policy, risking both your job and Jim’s. If nothing is done, and Jim is right, structure failure of the bridge could kill a number of people, or at the very least, cost a lot of taxpayer’s money.

Nuclear Scientist

(an old one that I came across in undergraduate but cannot remember where, if you let me know. I’ve also expanded on what I remember this scenario to be)

You are a Nuclear Physicist and have been offered a job at Nuclear weapons company. This new job offers twice the pay that you are presently receiving at your current job as an underpaid scientist, which doesn’t let you utilise your skills and expertises within nuclear physics, and you know that you and your family will have a much better lifestyle should you take this opportunity. Also you know that the job market is very bad at the moment and that it is likely that you will not be able to get a better job than this one for a long time. The problem is that you know that this company has a particularly bad track record with selling their nuclear arms to ‘failed states’ and that this particular contract you will be employed under is to sell the produced arms to a rather volatile nation already at war with a neighbouring country. You know if you do not take up this job that somebody else will (i.e. the arms will be produced either way). Do you take the job? Why? Is this decision more to do with your own personal well-being than any other concern? (There is no legal precedent to close the operations of this company)