Santa Clara University houses the Markula Center for Applied Ethics. The Center focuses on providing ethics resources to groups, organizations, institutions, and society that heighten ethical awareness and improve ethical decision making by offering ethical theory and practical methods that can be applied to real world situations. The Center is committed to exploring the ethical dimensions of issues in the areas of business, health care, education, technology, and public policy.The Markula Center website is an outgrowth of the Center’s mission. The website contains a great deal of information regarding the practice of ethics, including real life cases and a chance for visitors to contribute solutions to the cases. This case essay assignment uses one of the Ethics Connection’s cases and related visitor comments as its focus.The assignment first requires that you read two brief articles available at the Ethics Connection web site. One article, “Thinking Ethically,” reviews five values-based approaches to evaluating moral issues. The second, “A Framework for Ethical Decision Making”, describes a model of ethical decision making.After reading the two articles, read and consider “The Case of the Sole Remaining Supplier”. Think about the following issues as you do, then develop the major portion of your essay around the following points.What are the relevant facts in the case? Briefly recap them.The legal and business issues this situation involves (such as honoring contracts, avoiding lawsuits, and “maximizing shareholder value”) are clear and easily identified. What about the moral issue(s)? Define it (them) as clearly as you can.The article “A Framework for Ethical Decision Making” provides a step-by-step process for analyzing situations and making ethical decisions. Using that framework and one (and ONLY ONE) of the five ethical perspectives discussed in the “Thinking Ethically” article, develop and justify the course of action you would have taken in the situation the case describes.The remaining portion of your essay should deal with the comments to the case that have been archived at the Markula site. Using the link in the previous sentence to go to that comments archive, read and consider each comment, then address the following in your paper.In the first of the “comments” to the case, Thomas Shanks, who authored “The Case of the Sole Remaining Supplier,” describes what really happened. Identify and briefly discuss the values-based approach or approaches that best explain the course of action the transistor company actually pursued.After reading and thinking about the remaining four comments, select the one that, in your judgment, represents the best example of sound ethical reasoning and briefly explain why you find it to be so, again relying on one of the values-based approaches described in the “Thinking Ethically” article.The purpose of this assignment is to apply, to a real life situation, theoretical perspectives on business ethics and ethical decision making.LINKS:Markula Center – https://www.scu.edu/ethics/Articles – https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/thinking-ethically/https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/a-framework-for-ethical-decision-making/The CASE – https://legacy.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v7n3/supplier.html
