Institute of Natural Management Sciences, Rawalpindi - BUSINESS M HRM 531

Case 1: The Ethics of Grunge Work

1)Consider the seven values used for ethically defining jobs: meaningful work, leisure time, money, power, prestige, comfort, and security.

• • Just from what you’ve read about Everman and Cobain, which values do they share? Where do they diverge (=different)?

• • Are there any values not on the list that could be added to apply to the careers of either Everman or Cobain?

2. Everman worked to live; Cobain lived to work.

• • What does that mean?

• • Do you think it’s true? Explain.

• • Does this split also divide up the seven values used for ethically defining jobs? If not, why not? If so, what’s the split?

3. Everman is a sequencer; he wholeheartedly followed one career path, then a second, and a third. He’s a different kind of sequencer than the more standard version: a man or woman following a single main career path interrupts it to do something else (have a child, start a small company, travel around the world) and then returns to the old job.

• • What’s the difference between these two kinds of sequencing in terms of the value of work and what it can give you?

o Would it be useful to have different names for these two types of sequencers, or would that be splitting hairs?

4. According to Everman, Cellini believed that in order to live a full life, you must develop each of the soul’s three parts: the artist, the warrior, and the philosopher.

Assuming this is true, must it necessarily involve one’s work life? Is it possible to define a full life that doesn’t include any reference to your gainful employment (in other words, is it possible to live fully without worrying about what your job is)? What values for work are implied by your response?

5. Cobain comes to believe that he’s unethically exploiting consumers.

• In what sense is he unethically exploiting consumers?

• What des Cbain’s feeling reveal abut the values he assciates with his wrk life?

• Was Cobain’s response to his perceived failure justifiable? Explain

6. Whose career would you rather have: Everman’s or Cobain’s? Why? What does that tell you about your values?

7. In the career you’ve chosen for yourself (just pick one, if you haven’t), what would it mean to burn out? What would it mean to fade away?

8. Is it better to burn out or fade away? Justify in terms of the values that can be attached to working life.

Case 2

1. What are some of the advantages to being a policeman? What are some of the advantages to being a drug dealer? Presumably, Pulido started out being an honest cop, and over the course of ten years fell (or climbed) into the illegal drug business. Can you imagine how the seven values of his work might have shifted as this transformation developed?

• Which values grew in importance?
• Which might have fallen away?
• Could any of the values have been maintained through the shift in professions?

2. Officer Pulido is a career sequencer, but it’s a unique kind of sequencing because his two careers actually contradict each other. It’s not that he took time off to follow some outside interest, and it’s not that he pursued various jobs that all fit into a larger plan. He did one thing and then the opposite. Is there a sense in which he has canceled out his professional life? Explain.
3. Imagine that you are considering two career directions: joining the police academy or

growing some pot in the basement and getting a start in the drug-dealing business. Regardless of whether you’d ever actually do it, what ethical theory (duties, rights,

utilitarianism, some other) could be employed to justify the decision to go the drug route? What ethical theory (duties, rights, utilitarianism, some other) could you employ to

justify the decision to go the police route?

4. Apply Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence to the cop/drug-dealer choice. You would have to choose one life and live it over and over forever. Which would you choose? Why? Does that tell you anything about what you should do with the one and only life you have?

5. Doctors and pharmacists deliver powerful, addictive drugs that send waves of tremendous pleasure through the users’ bodies (and sometimes those meds result in abuse and death). So that makes three career directions that have something in common: doctor, pharmacist, street

drug dealer. Now, in terms of the seven values of work, what do the jobs have in common, and where do they diverge?

6. From the newspaper report on the Pulido case, “Pulido bought a Hyde Park building where his wife began teaching dance to children—and where once a month for the next several years Pulido hosted and provided protection for drug-and-sex parties. Admittance ran from twenty to forty dollars, and narcotics were often in open use. Lap dances in the “boom-boom room” cost an additional twenty dollars. As many as one hundred people attended on a given night, including well-known felons, drug dealers, and law-enforcement officers—some in uniform.”

Compare and contrast Pulido’s wife’s job and Pulido’s. Which post is most desirable for the person valuing prestige?

7. How could Pulido’s drug operation be characterized as unethical in terms of the exploitation of consumers?

8. In a sense, Pulido’s wife worked for her husband. By running a dance school out of the building where Pulido operated, she provided cover for his operation.

• How could the argument be made that she has an ethical responsibility to resign from her job by shutting down the dance classes so that her husband could no longer use the space to sell drugs?
  • In ethical terms, how could she justify pretending not to know what was going on in her building once a month?

• In ethical terms, and assuming she explicitly recognizes and accepts that she’s providing space and cover for her husband’s activities, how could she justify continuing to work for his operation?

9. Assuming you were a drug dealer, who would you sell to, andnotsell to? Why? Does this tell you anything about how willing you might be in the future to work for an ethically challenged corporation?

Case 3: Investigative Fashion Journalism

1. “Part of the fun,” she writes, “is being your own detective by trying to dig up evidence, to see what the big cover up is about.” Is there a connection between “fun” and meaningful work? Where does fun fit in the consideration of values to be weighed when considering a career track?

2. What career-related values do you suspect light up Dahlia and, more generally, the kinds of people who try to make up jobs for themselves?

3. Ethically troubling exploitation in the fashion industry.

• Do you think she thinks there’s exploitation in the fashion industry? Where? (B?n có ngh? r?ng cô ?y ngh? r?ng có s? bóc l?t trong công nghi?p th?i trang ? ? ?âu?