Business Ethica Case Study
Project 1- Business Ethics Case Study As years go by more firms are beginning to recognize the benefits of improving ethical conduct. They are seeing an enormous correlation between business ethics and financial performance (Ferrell). There are numerous of examples that demonstrate that building an ethical reputation among employees, customers, and the general public pays off. For example, employee commitment and trust, investor loyalty and trust, and customer satisfaction and trust, which in the end creates profit (Ferrell). The reputation of a company can either benefit these three areas if they integrate ethics into the company as a whole, or prejudice if they decide to make bad ethical decisions. Today there are many cases when the company or employer is the one who is behaving in an incorrect ethical manner and not the employee. That’s what happened to an employee named Chantale Leroux in the case of Whistleblowing and the Environment: the Case of Avco Environmental. Chantale worked as a clerk for a small toxic-waste disposal company. The company was called Avco Environmental Services and had a contract to disposes of medical waste from a local hospital (MacDonald). Chantale one day comes across some documents that suggest that Avco has been disposing of some of the medical waste in a local municipal landfill (MacDonald). Chantale knew that what they were doing was illegal so she decided to gather the documents that suggest Avco has been doing this and takes them to her superior (MacDonald). What she has found is neither her concern nor his, and that as clerks, they are in charge of record keeping, not making decisions about where the medical waste gets dumped (MacDonald). Chantale confused and awed of what her superior has said to her takes a day to think things through. The next day she then decides to go to the company’s Operations Manager and lets her know what she had discovered. The Operations Manager annoyingly tells Chantale that it is not her
Cited: Ferrell, Odies C., Linda Ferrell, and John Fraedrich. Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases. Australia: Houghton Mifflin, 2012. Print. MacDonald, Chris. "Whistleblowing & the Environment: The Case of Avco Environmental."Whistleblowing & the Environment: The Case of Avco Environmental. The EthicsWeb Bookstore, n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2013. <http://www.businessethics.ca/cases/wb-env1.html>.