Utilitarian Ethics
Business Ethics 3825
Case of the Sole Remaining Supplier
Relevant stakeholders
Internal stakeholders
External stakeholders
Utilitarian ethics: Action plan
Desired aims
Specific Actions
Raising the quality control standards
Develop elaborate Standard installation and operation procedures (SIOP)
Right of revoking supply contract unilaterally in case of non-compliance to SIOP
Optimal good achieved
Case of the Sole Remaining Supplier
The case of 'sole remaining supplier' is regarding a firm that manufactures heart pacemakers. The pacemaker is a modern device that is used by the heart patients who have a medical problem of skipping heart beats. If regular heart beat (averagely after each 1.2 seconds) does not take place, the pacemaker stimulates the heart and it beats regularly. In its earliest years of invention, patients solely depended upon pacemaker whereas their own heart normal heartbeat was suspended. There were serious reservation in public, doctors, and the supplier company as to the ethical aspect of selling a 'medical device' that ran the risk of failing and depriving the patient of life. Since the installation of this device required extremely delicate handling, doctors were also least adept at installing pacemakers. Some specific stories about patients dying of issue related to the pacemaker also made the management of supplying company to immediately decide upon whether or not to continue supplying the product (Shanks, n.d.). Since there were several ethical dilemmas involved in both sides of decision, continuing or suspending the supply, all this gave rise to heightened tension within the board meeting as to what should be the most appropriate ethical stance of the company to follow.
Relevant stakeholders
There were several stakeholders involved in this case scenario. These belonged from both within and outside the case organization.
Internal stakeholders
The internal stakeholders involved in this case were the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) board of directors (BOD), the engineering team of supplier organization, and the legal team responsible for handling the law suits. The biggest stake within the organization was that of the employees of this organization whose employees depended on organization's earning for their salaries. Thus, in case that a law suit was filed after failure of a pacemaker, the supplier company as a whole including...
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