MGMT 3031
Jeff Fuentes
Since the beginning of this course, I've kept an open mind about the various views my fellow colleagues expressed regarding ethics. Though I'm not surprised that each and every one of us have varying views on various situations, what has surprised me was how they viewed certain questionable conditions and how they would respond to it. With the many discussions going on in class, it allows us students to express ourselves and it's because of this trade of information/opinions it has broadened my scope and view of ethics as a whole.
Highlighting some of the many fascinating activities, lectures, commentaries, documentaries, and/or short cases that took place in class (which I found interesting) were;
Wal-Mart video documentary
Johnson & Johnson and the Tylenol Poisoning case study
Four Crisis Stages discussion
Dr. Seuss' The Lorax film
What I found intriguing about the Wal-Mart film documentary was in their operations. More specifically how they treat their employees. From what I saw (although the views discussed in the documentary could potentially be totally biased) Wal-Mart doesn't run on integrity, but rather through greed. As I discussed in the documentary film analysis assignment, there were several ethical issues that have been addressed all throughout the movie. One of them was regarding the treatment higher level management has towards lower level employees. All throughout my life, I've been disciplined with the idea that I should do unto others what I want others done to myself. As a student in the faculty of management here at the University of Lethbridge, equality was something that has been emphasized greatly which is the opposite of what is being practiced at Wal-Mart. All in all, that documentary left me shaking my head out of disapointment.
When the class had a discussion about the Johnson & Johnson and the Tylenol Poisoning case, it gave me a slight sense of relief to know that I'm not too reliant on Tylenol whenever I'm sick. However on a more serious note, it made me wonder what exactly was going on in the minds of the management team. Especially the moment they heard news of consumers who purchased the counterfeit Tylenol capsules. Just thinking about it seems quite mind boggling and stressful at the same time. As far as I'm concerened, the only comment I can make about all this was that the stress management tactics I've learned from previous classes may not appear to be too effective in this situation. All the while, I was also wondering what exactly pushed the perpetrator to do what he did. To say and to quote the article that “there was no evident motive for the killings” seems very unlikely to me, I don't buy it.
If I were to have been asked “which topic of discussion was quite interesting to me?” I'd say that an interesting in class discussion would be about the four crisis stages. The first of the four being the prodromal crisis stage is the warning stage. Second is the acute crisis stage which is when the problem occurs. Thirdly, the chronic crisis stage where investigation and the media hype things. Lastly the crisis resolution stage is when the problem has been resolved and you can take a breath of relaxation. Throughout this discussion, I've been recalling past experience where I have gone through these four stages without realizing what they were called at the time. At the same time, I was comparing these four crisis stages to the effective problem solving steps in the workplace. Although both methods have their cross overs, at the end of the day, I eventually realized that the four crisis stages only goes over phases within a problem and that the problem solving steps... Provide steps to solve a problem. With that said I'm interested to see how much further management expands on these four crisis stages, as these appear to be a skeletal outline that can be filled in with various