Ethics in Contemporary Life
Steve Alcorn
ELPA 6453
Professor Renner
October 25, 2006
Examples of ethical and unethical practices abound in everyday life. Not only can ethical and unethical practices be found in our everyday “real” life, but also in news reports in the media and in the various outlets that we use for entertainment. For example, consider the television show Firefly created by Joss Whedon and the recent scandal involving Hewlett-Packard Chairman of the Board Pattie Dunn.
According to Florence (2005), Firefly is a television show that combines two distinct genres: western and science-fiction. The focus of the show is on the Captain of the cargo ship Serenity, Captain Malcolm Reynolds. Having fought a war against and having been defeated in that war by the dominant governing body in the galaxy, the Alliance, Mal ekes out a living by working as a transporter of items, operating on the fringes of society, taking on jobs that sometimes border on the illegal.
One particular transport job occurred in the episode “The Train Job.” In this episode, briefly, Mal is hired by a crime boss called Niska to steal Alliance goods. However, Mal discovers that the goods are actually medical supplies and, having met the people that the medical supplies were originally meant for, Mal decides to break his arrangement with Niska, thus becoming the crime boss’ enemy and setting up the premise of the episode “War Stories” in which Niska seeks his revenge upon Mal for double-crossing him (Florence, 2005).
What’s interesting about this episode – beyond all of the spaceships and the action and the dialogue – is what “The Train Job” reveals about Mal’s character and moral code. Niska is a crime lord, a very dangerous man whose reputation for violence and retribution is very well-known to Mal. To cross Niska is to court disaster and death. Nevertheless, Mal disregarded these very real factors and decided to return the goods that he stole once he found out that the goods were medicine. Granted, while he was willingly engagingly in a crime against the dominant governing body and was doing business with a known crime lord and had no inherent problems with doing so, Mal can be seen as a somewhat morally ambiguous character, but there are still certain aspects of his character that brook no moral shades of grey.
For instance, near the end of the episode, as Mal and Zoe, his second in command, are returning the medicine, they’re caught by Sheriff Bourne. Consider this passage from the script of “The Train Job” as written by Joss Whedon and Tim Minear (2006):
BOURNE
We got word of a ship not far out, came looking. Didn’t
expect to find you coming back.
MAL
Didn’t expect to be coming.
The deputy from Act Two comes over as they speak, opens the crates.
DEPUTY
Nothin’ missing.
Mal and the Sheriff stare at each other. Clearly an understanding, as he addresses the pair of them:
BOURNE
You were truthful back in town. These are tough times. Hard to find yourself work.
A man can get a job, he might not look too close at what that job is.
(to Mal)
But a man learns all the details of a situation like ours, well then he has a choice.
MAL
I don’t believe that he does.
There is a moment then. The Sheriff slightly smiles. (p. 75)
To Mal, there simply was no choice once he found out the entirety of the situation and the medicine. Therefore, using terminology discussed in class, Mal is, at least in this example, a Kantian and, to a degree, a Utilitarian. As Johnson (2005) explained, in a Kantian worldview, it’s imperative to “do what is morally right no matter what the consequences” (p. 132). A Utilitarian, Johnson (2005) explained, decides what to do based upon the potential benefits for the greatest number of people.
While the Utilitarian aspect of the situation Mal found himself in – the medicine that he stole will do more good for more people than the money he was set to earn from the theft would do for he and his eight crew members – is significant, the Kantian aspect is more in evidence. Recall that to Mal, there was no moral equivocation, no question that the right thing to do, returning the medicine, must be done despite the very real consequences, and those consequences do come later in the series as an enraged Niska seeks his revenge.
Besides being evident in our pop culture entertainment, examples of ethical and unethical behavior can be found on the evening news. Kaplan (2006) told of a certain situation at Hewlett-Packard (HP). Briefly, certain information from a HP board meeting had been leaked to the media, so steps were taken to ascertain the identity of the leak. In addition to the phone and computer records of company equipment that were monitored and checked – a common practice in business – the personal phone records of HP board members were accessed via a process called pretexting. Essentially, pretexting is using someone’s ID to obtain information from the phone company. Ultimately, the identity of the board member leaking HP information was discovered. However, it was determined that certain ethical lines had been crossed, but HP Chairman of the Board Pattie Dunn, who authorized the investigation into the leak, maintained that her ignorance of such nefarious doings as pretexting.
This situation highlights some very interesting and somewhat complicated ethical considerations. Indeed, the actions as described run directly counter to the Business Ethics code found on the Hewlett-Packard (2006) website. Included in this code is the statement that “there is no substitute for personal and professional integrity” and the injunction that a premium is to placed upon “Honesty in communicating within the company and our business partners, suppliers and customers, while at the same time protecting the company’s confidential information and trade secrets.”
Leaders must tread warily, for inappropriate wielding of power can have very real consequences. The fallout for HP has been tremendous. As reported by Kostigen (2006), HP, formerly a paragon of ethical dealings in the business marketplace, ranked at one point as # 2 on the Business Ethics magazine’s Top 100 list, now finds its ethical standing in tatters.
This scandal, further, has had effects within HP itself, and it demonstrates the idea of how easy it is for leaders to cast shadows. As described by Johnson (2005), there are a number of shadows that leaders can cast. One of them is the Shadow of Deceit, and one of the examples of this type of shadow is when a leader will “violate the privacy rights of followers” (p. 18), and a result of this type of violation is the breaking of trust. Another shadow is the Shadow of Irresponsibility, for leaders “are held accountable for the performance of their entire department or unit” (p. 25).
Dunn very obviously presided over an investigation guilty of violating the privacy of her followers, thus casting the Shadow of Deceit. Looking into the private phone accounts of HP’s board members is over the line. It’s one thing to look into communication records of company equipment, which is a common practice, but accessing personal records is blatantly unethical.
Dunn also cast the Shadow of Irresponsibility. The personal information of HP board members was collected, remember, by the act of pretexting, an act that not only infringed upon the privacy of the HP board members, but also, by definition, this information was gathered by morally and legally questionable means. One a very real level, Dunn’s assertions that she didn’t wasn’t aware of the pretexting as it was occurring are irrelevant, for she was the leader, the one who had authorized the investigation in the first place, and it was her business to know how it was being done.
As can be seen, examples of ethical and unethical practices are ubiquitous in our society, and they’re found not only found in the news, but also in our entertainment choices. From the somewhat simple and straightforward illustration of Captain Malcolm Reynolds following his conscience regardless of the consequences to the somewhat more subtle and nuanced situation of the HP ethics scandal, these examples offer chances for reflection and application to our own lives.
References
Florence, B. (2005, October). Firefly episode checklist. Starlog, 40-41.
Hewlett-Packard. (2006). Business ethics. Retrieved October 9, 2006, from http://www
.hp.com/cgi-bin/pf-new.cgi?IN=referer
Johnson, C. E. (2005). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership. (2nd ed.). Sage
Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Kaplan, D. A. (2006, September 18). Suspicions and spies in silicon valley. Newsweek, 148, 41-47.
Kostigen, T. (2006). Is business ethics all bull? In MarketWatch. Retrieved October 9,
2006, from http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Story
.aspx?guid=%7B24E7C993-2B1E-4F80-80DE-7FA1E353236D%7D&siteid
=&print=true&dist=printTop
Whedon, J. & Minear, T. (2006). The train job. In Bernstein, A., Cairns, B., Derrick, K., & DiLallo, T, Firefly: The official companion (Vol. 1) (pp. 54-77). Titan Books, London.