Our study of ethics in business can sometimes seem esoteric and removed from day-to-day management responsibilities, but media are filled with real-life examples of unethical business behavior that harms the businesses involved, as well as their shareholders, customers, employees, and other stakeholders. This paper assignment asks you to find such an example, examine what went wrong, and apply the materials we’ve been reading to develop preventions and solutions. Take an in-depth look at the situation through the lens of secular legal and ethical principles but also through the lens of a Biblical worldview.
Identify a news story that has been published within the 30 days preceding the due date of this assignment that describes a breach of business ethics. You may find this through a web search, library research, professional journals, professional association websites, newspapers, etc. The breach may be criminal, based in tort, or otherwise unethical. Your paper will: • Briefly explain the situation and the parties involved. • Identify your ethical standard; explain how this situation violated that standard. • Explain how you would have prevented this situation and would now respond, including support from scholarly and Biblical sources.
Ethical Standard: Deontology (The Categorical Imperative)
Deontology asserts that the morality of an action should be judged based on whether the action adheres to a rule or rules (duties), regardless of the consequences.1 Kant's Categorical Imperative offers two main formulations relevant here:
Universalizability Principle: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Humanity Principle (End-in-Itself): Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.
Violation of the Standard
Violation of the Humanity Principle: TechCorp treated its users merely as a means to an end (profit). The company used its users' personal data (their inherent value and autonomy) solely as a tool to generate revenue from advertisers. By intentionally obscuring the privacy changes, TechCorp failed to respect the user's rational ability to consent, thus failing to treat them as an end (a rational being worthy of respect).
Violation of the Universalizability Principle: The maxim of TechCorp's action was: "It is permissible for a company to deceive its customers about privacy changes to increase short-term profits." If this maxim were to be universalized, no one would trust any company's privacy policies, rendering all terms of service meaningless and destroying the very mechanism of trust required for e-commerce to function. TechCorp's action relies on a world where other companies are transparent while they are not—a contradiction.
3. Prevention and Response: Legal, Secular, and Biblical Lenses
A. Prevention (Before the Breach)
Lens
Preventive Action
Scholarly/Biblical Support
Secular/Legal
Implement a Privacy by Design (PbD) Framework. Make user privacy the default setting and require explicit, informed consent (opt-in) for any data sharing. Establish a clear Chief Ethics Officer role with veto power over product launches involving ethically ambiguous data practices.
Scholarly Support: PbD is a key principle of modern data laws (e.g., GDPR). It creates a proactive, preventative system, which is far cheaper than reactive crisis management. (Reference a relevant GDPR article or a text on ethical leadership).
Sample Answer
This is an excellent framework for analyzing the practical application of business ethics and integrating a faith-based perspective. Since I cannot perform real-time news searches that guarantee a story within a specific 30-day window from an unknown future due date, I will provide a hypothetical scenario structure and use a recent, generalized ethical failure type (e.g., greenwashing or data privacy breach) to illustrate how you should structure your paper.
For your actual assignment, you must replace the hypothetical details with a real, current news story.
📝 Ethical Breach Case Study: The Fictional "TechCorp Data Scandal"
1. Situation and Parties Involved
Element
Description
Situation
TechCorp, a major social media platform, was recently exposed for quietly changing its privacy settings to share user location data and browsing habits with third-party advertisers without explicit, opt-in consent. The company buried the change in a lengthy Terms of Service update, knowing most users would click "Agree" without reading. This practice was reportedly used to boost advertising revenue by 40% in the last quarter.
Parties Harmed
Customers/Users: Their privacy was violated, and personal data was monetized without their informed consent. Shareholders: Initially benefited from the stock increase, but now face massive losses due to pending regulatory fines and consumer trust collapse. Employees: Those who knew face moral distress; the entire workforce faces job insecurity and reputational damage.
Ethical Breach
Deceptive practices, lack of transparency, violation of user autonomy, and prioritizing profit over stakeholder well-being.
2. Identifying the Ethical Standard and Violation
The identified ethical standard for this analysis is Deontology (Duty-Based Ethics), specifically focusing on Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative.
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