Question

Apply the following theories to solve this case: Utilitarian (act and rule), deontological and virtue theories. Rachel works as a Quality Assurance Engineer at a large electronics company. She is responsible for the final testing of her company’s servers and is part of a team which decides when new products will be shipped to distributors for sale.Rachel’s company has a contract with another company which makes the chips which are incorporated into the servers Rachel’s company makes. The business model for this product is to release a new generation server approximately every six months, meaning Rachel has a limited timeframe to conduct her Quality Control tests.Because there is such a short amount of time between the release of each next new product, the Quality and Assurance department cannot perform every possible test on the servers to ensure they are defect free. Rachel will not ship a product if there is any possibility that the server could malfunction and cause physical harm to the customer. However, she will ship a product that has a higher likelihood of failure resulting in data loss for the customer, because she knows that if she doesn't, her company's competitor will. Is this an ethical way to conduct business?

Answer 1

Answer:

Utilitarian (act and rule) – According to Act Utilitarian, she is not morally justifying her actions, because of the limited time scope and competition pressure.

However, As per Rule Unitarian, she is justifying her actions. Because, she is following the rules for Quality Assurance work and as per the rule of the company and the product is not harming the customer physically or will malfunction.

Dentological Theory – According to Dentological theory, she is not doing any wrong as her actions are following the set of rules provided to her by the company, rather than concentrating on the consequences of the action.

Virtue Theory – According to Virtue theory, her action is not morally true and has sense of dishonesty towards the customer.

           

Is this an ethical way to conduct a business?

           

Yes, this is very much an ethical way to conduct a business. Because, she is following the rules framed by the company for her Quality Assurance work. Wherein, the product is not causing any physical harm and is not malfunctioned. Moreover, she has a very limited time of six months to do her job over a new product with limited time and resources and competition pressure. As far as, data loss to the customer is concerned. This may or may not happen. Moreover, in today’s time most of the companies are keeping a data backup for their business.