Business Ethical Issues
A person cannot evaluate policies within ethical standards until he or she identifies the issues that those
policies are intended to address. In this assignment, you do just that.
Complete the following for identifying an ethical issue:
� Identify a potential ethical dilemma from a real company. The company could be a current company for
which you work, a company in which you used to work, a friend’s company, or so on. The ethical issue or
problem selected must affect the company, potentially affect the company, or involve the company.
� Explain the issues involved, including:
o Identify the stakeholders.
o Identify the concerns of the stakeholders.
For example, a company may chose to videotape the office and read employee e-mails. The conflict here
may be that employees feel these practices are a violation of privacy and feel they have a right to a
certain level of the privacy. However, stakeholders defend these practices because their concerns are
whether the employees are getting their work done.
� Explain why you chose this particular issue and why the issue is important.
� Examine the current relevance of the issue. Is the issue currently in the media spotlight? Are there any
recent incidents or reasons why this issue has come to the public’s attention.
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Business Ethical Issues
Profit making is not bad for an organization since that is the main reason why they are in
the world of business. However, it is the manner in which these businesses conduct themselves
that brings questions of ethical behaviors. As noted by Duska (2014), the simple definition of
business ethics is the ability to distinguish the bad from the good and considering the effects it
has on the business environment and customers. Many companies, big or small have been
involved in acts that either violate the customers’ interests or the interests of the employees. This
paper presents the ethical issues and identification of the Whole Food Market Inc. and how the
customers and stakeholders have reacted towards it.
The ethical issue in this case is how the company sold unlabeled genetically modified
food in their supermarkets while their slogan reads “Nothing artificial, Ever”. The company has
been in the market creating monopoly as one of the best whole food company whose trust lies
with the customers. However, as I have been told by a friend who has worked in the company,
and enough information from magazines, the company has been in the limelight of selling
genetically modified food without labels. It is a false advertisement and a false view of the
company who is believed to do right things.
The stakeholders that have been involved by this situation have never been happy about
it. The stakeholders of this controversial issue are the employees and the management. The have
condemned the act following the customers the company serves. For, example, whole food
market serve big health care institutions whose directions are to get non-genetically modified
foods for their patients. The concern of stakeholders is how the management has neglected its
BUSINESS ETHICAL ISSUES 3
roles and subjects the society into unnecessary pains especially those who have been instructed
not to consume the genetically modified foods due to health reasons (Johnston, 2014).
The malpractices and the greed of getting money without any good ethics of most
organization is the reason why I chose this ethical issue. Most companies have left their obliged
roles and are rushing towards making a lot of money without considering the effects such acts
have on the customers and the society. For instance, the doctors instructs his or her patient not to
consume genetically modified foods, one goes to the shelves find unlabeled genetically modified
food and consume it increasing the chances infection he or she was preventing. This is an ethical
act that should not be accepted by such companies.
Due to the increasing rates of cancer incidences, several studies have hypothesized that
genetically modified foods have chemicals that initiate cancer infections. Confirmed or not
confirmed, genetically modified foods have components that are dangerous for the normal
growth of body cells. Due to the relationship of cancer and genetically modified foods, there
have been a lot of concerns through television, radio station and social networks about the high
rate of consumption of such food. There have been bills in some countries such U.S.A about the
removal of genetically modified food from the country due to their health issues. However, the
increasing global population has subjected people and organizations to manufacture the
genetically modified food to curb the rate of hunger due to their fast maturation. Nonetheless, the
bottom line is that they should be labeled to show customers that they are genetically modified or
not.
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References
Duska, R. F. (2014). Why Business Ethics Needs Rhetoric: An Aristotelian Perspective. Business
Ethics Quarterly, 24(1), 119-134.
Johnston, J. (2014). Whole Foods Market. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
