HSS F343: Professional Ethics

Mid-Semester Examination

Name: Mohammed Saeed Arshaq

ID: 2017B3A10397G

1) As given in the question, the professor’s research was on

the causes and cures for a disease, and it was largely (or
completely) funded by the pharmaceutical company through
a multi-year grant. The grant was conditional, with the
professor having to agree to submit a preliminary draft of the
report to the pharmaceutical company for feedback and
review.

The objective of the research was to test the efficacy of

medicines on the market, one of which was produced by this
pharmaceutical company. The results of the research, while
they did suggest that the pharmaceutical company’s
medicine did have a positive effect, there was also some
ambiguous data that could be interpreted as the medicine
having a negative effect on some patients.

As requested, the professor submitted the report, and the

company wrote back to ask if the professor would consider
deleting the ambiguous data as it could reflect badly on the
company, and since it’s not strong data anyway due to its
ambiguous nature.
The multi-year grant from the company has ended, and the
professor would need additional funding to keep the
research going, and an obvious means of doing so is
through the pharmaceutical company.
From a deontological perspective, there’s a strong conflict of
interest here. On the one hand, the professor wants to
continue their research. It is important work with large-scale
implications for human life, and so there are both personal
and professional incentives to keep the research going. On
the other hand, the company wants the unambiguous,
potentially defamatory data to be omitted from the final
report for the company’s benefit. But this is clearly unethical.
Even if the data is ambiguous, omitting it altogether is
unethical. The right thing to do would be to include the data
in the report with a disclaimer explaining the exact nature of
the data, leaving the task of interpreting the exact meaning
of the data itself in the hands of the reader.

From a utilitarian perspective, there’s a conflict of interest

because the professor has an incentive to keep the research
going for aforementioned reasons, and the pharmaceutical
company is an easy way to do that. While being unethical, if
the professor does comply with the demands of the
company, they will readily secure the next round of funding
for the research, and the research will no longer be in
jeopardy.

The professor has an incentive to both comply and to not

comply with the demands of the pharmaceutical company,
and hence, this poses an ethical dilemma.
2) As given in the question, B needs a laptop to work with for 2
weeks as B’s own laptop has crashed. A’s laptop needs to
be repaired, and so A’s organization asks him to use a
second hand laptop until the original one is repaired. What A
chooses to do is collect the new temporary laptop and lend it
to B, seeing as B desperately needs a laptop for work
considering B’s circumstances.

Was it unethical of A to give the company laptop to B? It

depends on what the company policy is. If company policy
mandates that you are to use company-sponsored
apparatus only for company purposes and that only the
respective employee is authorized to use it, then yes, this
would be unethical, even considering the dire and helpless
state of B -- because A doesn’t have the right or the authority
to make that decision.

If, however, there are no such stipulations made by A’s

company, then A’s actions would be completely ethical. He
chose to help B out in a time of need when there was no
obligation to do so, and that is a virtuous deed.

3)

(i) It should be self-explanatory, but a code of ethics is only

as good as it’s enforcement at all levels of an
 organization, otherwise it is merely something that exists in
theory but not in practice. If a certain code is applied to the
lower level employees, but the top executives are exempt
from it, then the phrase code of ethics has no meaning,
because it isn’t something that can be selectively applied
based on convenience.

(ii) Code of ethics is something that is enforced internally.

As such, it’s effectiveness really boils down to the vigor with
which the company chooses to enforce it. This establishes a
culture of accountability within the entire organization, all the
way upto the top. And the leaders of the organization should
be the ones adamant on strong enforcement of these codes
because it sets the precedent for everyone below to follow
suit.

(iii) It is the company itself that decides what the code of

ethics for the company will be. They are formulated on the
basis of all the potential conflicts one can possibly find
oneself in, so that in every situation, an employee knows
what their duty is. As such, the company, through its own
choices, decides what it stands for. And the enforcement of
its code of ethics will determine whether the company really
believes in the codes that it laid out or if it is simply lip-
service.

4) The ‘freedom of contract argument’ rests on the assertion that

a company is at liberty to choose how long it employs someone
on the basis of its own requirements. While this is technically true,
the problem with this argument is that when more than a certain
percentage of the total workforce is comprised of employees from
contractors, the company is essentially reaping the benefits of
employee labor without having to provide any of the benefits that
the company is obligated to provide to its employees, since
technically, they’re not employees. And that constitutes
opportunistic exploitation. It is the abuse of a loophole in the law
which fails to protect the interests of contractual workers.

5) Whistleblowing is when an act of ethical misconduct of an

organization is alerted to a higher authority through means of
specific internal channels that are put in place specifically for this
purpose and that have the power to judge and legislate these
acts.

Sounding the horn is a public alert to an ethical misconduct of an

organization. There are no specific channels of communication
through which this is done, and this is so because sounding the
horn happens when whistleblowing is not an option but the
perpetrator of the ethical misconduct has to be brought to justice.
So sounding the horn can be through media - newspapers, TV
news, the internet, etc.