BBM 406 WBA JUNE 2015
BBM 406: BUSINESS VALUES AND ETHICS
WBA JUNE 2015
Read the following case carefully and answer the questions that follow.
Professor Ballistico is scratching his head. Looking at the results of last month’s series of experiments makes him feel a bit uneasy. He has been sitting in his office for hours now trying to analyse the spreadsheets from every possible angle- but without success. He even had an argument with his research assistant, accusing her of having prepared the results incorrectly- but she had been right all along. Not that Ballistico is particularly unhappy about his project. It is actually quite a successful piece of research looking at the various side effects of good additives in frozen food. The two-year project had already produced some very good publications; he has even been invited several times to give interviews on the television and in the press about the results.
However, this time round he has a strange feeling. The thing that is making him feel uneasy is that according to the results of the latest tests, two substances involved in the study, called ‘longlife’ and
‘rotnever’, appear to quite significantly increase the risk of human allergies for long time consumers of the additives. And however he turns and interprets the results, his assistant really seemed to have delivered solid work on the data analysis. Normally, such surprising results would be good news.
Solid results of this kind would make for sensational presentations at the next conference of the
World Food Scientist Federation. On top of that, ‘longlife’ and- ‘rotnever’ are very common additives in the products of the large food multinational Foodcorp, which is the market leader in frozen food industry in his country. His results could really make big headlines. There is one little problem though; Professor Ballistico is director of the Foodcorp centre for Food Science at BigCity
University.
Three years ago, the food company donated USD 2.3milIion to BigCity University in order
WBA JUNE 2015
Read the following case carefully and answer the questions that follow.
Professor Ballistico is scratching his head. Looking at the results of last month’s series of experiments makes him feel a bit uneasy. He has been sitting in his office for hours now trying to analyse the spreadsheets from every possible angle- but without success. He even had an argument with his research assistant, accusing her of having prepared the results incorrectly- but she had been right all along. Not that Ballistico is particularly unhappy about his project. It is actually quite a successful piece of research looking at the various side effects of good additives in frozen food. The two-year project had already produced some very good publications; he has even been invited several times to give interviews on the television and in the press about the results.
However, this time round he has a strange feeling. The thing that is making him feel uneasy is that according to the results of the latest tests, two substances involved in the study, called ‘longlife’ and
‘rotnever’, appear to quite significantly increase the risk of human allergies for long time consumers of the additives. And however he turns and interprets the results, his assistant really seemed to have delivered solid work on the data analysis. Normally, such surprising results would be good news.
Solid results of this kind would make for sensational presentations at the next conference of the
World Food Scientist Federation. On top of that, ‘longlife’ and- ‘rotnever’ are very common additives in the products of the large food multinational Foodcorp, which is the market leader in frozen food industry in his country. His results could really make big headlines. There is one little problem though; Professor Ballistico is director of the Foodcorp centre for Food Science at BigCity
University.
Three years ago, the food company donated USD 2.3milIion to BigCity University in order