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1. Suppose that you had been one of the MBA applicants who stumbled across an
opportunity to learn your results early. What would you have done and why? Would you have
considered it a moral decision ? If so, on what basis would you have made it?

Given the stakes involved in the admission to the said universities and what would have followed
based on my career’s future, I probably would have gone for the option to know my results earlier
and perhaps seek an alternative thereafter which was all dependent on the hacking.

Would you have considered it a moral decision and if so on what basis would you have made it:
The question as to whether the act was moral or immoral is not to be answered by the applicants
considering the secondary forces that would have led to their lapse in judgement. That aside, the
decision to hack into the websites servers would be determined by my judgmental fallacy where if
any act were towards to the achievement of self-good then that I would deem as morally acceptable
and correct even if the law stipulates otherwise as a student.
2. Assess the morality of what the curious applicants did from the point of view of
egoism, utilitarianism, Kant’s ethics, and Ross’s populisms rule utilitarianism.

i) Egoism- Egoism is an ethical theory that treats self-interest as the foundation of

morality.
Under the influence of this theory, then the applicant’s moral stand is deemed correct as the hack
was aimed for the good of their self-interests.

ii) Utilitarianism- Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that determines right from wrong
by focusing on outcomes. It is a form of consequentialism. When utilitarianism is applied to,
the argument of whether the applicants were right or wrong then they can be either right or
wrong as considered in the following factors.
The first instance of accounting for the morality using this theory is that they were right.
Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest
good for the greatest number. It is the only moral framework that can be used to justify
military force or war. It is also the most common approach to moral reasoning used in
business because of the way in which it accounts for costs and benefits. Probably after
assessing on other shortcuts they would have used to attain their results going by the costs
and benefits then this was in consequential thinking the best way. However, their judgement
were biased as they did not follow the consequential thinking to the fullest in terms of what
would happen if the hacking was discovered.

The second instance is that they were wrong because utilitarianism sides with the greater
good of the people but for this instance, it was for their good as they did not put into
consideration what would happen to those who could not gain an access to the said site.
 Kants ethics. - is based on the view that the only intrinsically good thing is a good will an
action can only be good if it the principle behind it serves a duty to the moral law.

 His principle of universalizability requires that, for an action to be permissible, it must be

possible to apply it to all people without a contradiction occurring. In this case therefore
according to Kant’s theory, then their actions are deemed as immoral as the hacking did not
to apply to all of the applying students hence the concept of universalizability doesnot apply
here as per kunt. Another thing is their hacking will does not serve the moral law as would
have been prescribed by those schools regarding accessing the tests.

Ross pluralism; Ross's ethical system is deontological and anti-consequentialist since it is

based on adherence to rules or duties rather than outcomes. In this system the applicants can
be termed as culprits as it demands observing the law no matter what the foreseen outcome
would be.

Rule utalitarianism : For rule utilitarians, the correctness of a rule is determined by the
amount of good it brings about when followed. The rule goes further to state that the
rightness or wrongness of a particular action is a function of the correctness of the rule of
which it is an instance. At their instance breaching the law regarding to their results would
have put the reputation of the university, the career at large and the people in the industry in
the said course in jeopardy. Basing our argument on this, the amount of good done to
themselves is incomprehensible to the bad they would have done to the others at large.

3. In your view, was it wrong for the MBA applicants to take an unauthorized peek
at their application files? Explain why you consider what they did morally permissible or
impermissible . What obligations ideals and effects should have the applicants considered ? do
you think, as some have suggested that there is a generation gap in this issue.
Despite arguing that I would have been involved in hacking to get the results, it still remains a gross
misconduct educationally and professionally uncouth behavior.

The reason as to why I consider this as morally impermissible is that as per Stanford business
school none of the culprits had a valid reason of their hacking that gives the notion that the culprits
were guided by their own interests but not for the greater good.

The applicants should have considered their moral obligation to country, institution and self as
professionals and that there is a set moral code of conduct stipulated for them.

The law at the university in some way considers this hacking as some form of thuggery. The
applicants who hacked are professionals and this would alter their reputation and ideals thereby
tarnishing their names as thieves.
 A generation gap or generational gap is a difference of opinions between one generation and
another regarding beliefs, politics, or values. This clearly is a generation gap as in the older
generation things would have been conducted in a different way like administering the tests and
results physically rather than through the internet. In the passage the commentator says that the
aforementioned students grew up with the internet where they tend to see it as wide open territory
and don’t view this level of web snooping as indicating a character flaw. I would gladly side with
such a statement both from an outside opinion and as one who was involved from the university
side and the hackers.

4. Did Harvard and MIT overreact or was it necessary for them to respond as they
did in order to send a strong message about the importance of ethics? If you were a business –
school admissions official how would you have handled this situation.

In my opinion the two -Harvard and MIT- universities did what they deemed necessary to affirm
their position among the leading institutions in terms of ethics and educational discipline.
In support of Dean Clark as he puts it, ”….. the mission of the Harvard school of business is to
educate principled leaders who make a difference in the world and to achieve that a person must
have many skills and qualities , including the highest standards of integrity, sound judgment sound
moral compass and an intuitive sense of what is right and wrong”
With such a statement on the mission of the institution, the options are so few on how to deal with
the culprits and among them, which are reasonable, is to totally reject them.

In the case that I was a business school official, I strongly believe that in law an action can be right
or wrong but to be sufficiently human the circumstances that lead to a certain act are what
determines if the act was right or wrong. The Stanford school of business I think handled it in the
right way, which was by giving the applicants a chance to explain themselves in writing which is
more of a second chance. Perhaps this was the best approach that I would have adopted and then
would have determined what to do from there.

5. Assess the argument that the applicants who snooped were just engaging in the
type of bold and aggressive behavior that takes for business success. In your view, are these
applicants likely to make good business leaders? What about the argument the argument that it
is really the fault of the universities for not having more secure procedures, not the fault of the
applicants who took advantage of the fact?

The argument that the applicants were just engaging in type of bold and aggressive behavior that
takes for business course holds water. This is because as a business professional and leader your
success in the field will be determined by your boldness and how aggressive you are in executing
your ideas. Moreover, having an anticipation for the future and trying to manipulate the future for
the good of the business cannot be ignored which is what the hackers tried to achieve. Above
characterizing the individual’s as bold and aggressive, I would also brand them as a visionary group
of people which guarantees them business success.
 The other issue in this question is that it is the fault of the universities for not taking charge of their
online safety. I would say that it does not come anywhere close to my imagination that these
universities did not have a form of online privacy and security that they could rely on and thus end
up sub-contracting for this purpose. The universities should accept the blame as part of their
management protocols error of not trying to find a way to cater for such instances by themselves.
This rather paints a picture of reluctance by the universities despite the fact that they try to act in the
name of ethics.

6. One of the applicants admits that he used poor judgement but believes that his
ethics should not be questioned. What do you think he means? If he exercised poor judgement
on a question of right and wrong, isn’t that a matter of his ethics? Stanford’s Derrick Bolton
distinguishes between a lapse of judgement and a lack of integrity. What do you see as the
difference ? based on this episode, what, if, anything, can we say about the ethics and the
characters of the curious applicants?

One of the applicants admits that he did a mistake and that his ethics should not be questioned, by
this he means that one action cannot be used to define your whole character because we all fall
short in making mistakes but that one single mistake does not totally define who you are just to say
the least.

The question of ethics that he had before him was not a simple yes or no answer but as I have said
before it was influenced by other factors such as curiosity. To add weight to that, is that it was not a
decision that involved matters to do with his area of specialization as a professional but rather a
general life experience that would have been experienced by anyone whatsoever. In his thoughts he
was clear that this would not have caused any harm which made him progress with the decision.
Such factors and instances do not call his ethics into action.

In distinguishing between a lapse in judgement and a lack of integrity is that in my opinion a lapse
in judgement can lead you to committing a mistake unconsciously while a lack of integrity make
you commit the mistake consciously. It is with this explanation that I think Stanford directs the
hackers to write an explanation of their actions so that they can determine if it’s a question of lapse
of judgement or of integrity.

I support that the hackers character and ethics were flawed. This is because it is common sense that
as a professional they should not be snooping into confidential and private matters. To make it
worse is that the confidential matters involve them, which shows that they are trying to breach a set
code of conduct defined for them both as students and professionals, which shows their inability to
follow rules and regulations.
REFERENCES

1. 2020 Ethics Unwrapped - McCombs School of Business – The University of Texas

at Austin.

2. Hooker, Brad, "Ross-Style Pluralism Versus Rule-Consequentialism," Mind, 1996,

105(420): 531-552.

3. Ross, W. D., "The Basis of Objective Judgments," International Journal of Ethics,

1927, 37(2): 113-127.

4. Ross, W. D. and Stratton-Lake, Philip, The Right and the Good, (Oxford: Clarendon
Press) 2002.