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A few years ago, you founded a company
that manufactures meatless burgers.
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Your product is now sold in
stores worldwide.
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But you’ve recently received awful news:
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three unrelated people in one city died
after eating your burgers.
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The police concluded that a criminal
targeted your brand,
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injecting poison into your product
in at least two grocery stores.
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The culprit used an ultrafine instrument
that left no trace on the packaging,
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making it impossible to determine which
products were compromised.
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Your burgers were immediately
removed from the two stores
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where the victims bought them.
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The deaths are headline news,
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the killer is still at large, and
sales have plummeted.
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You must quickly develop a strategy
to deal with the crisis.
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Your team comes up with three options:
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1. Do nothing.
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2. Pull the products from grocery stores
citywide and destroy them.
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Or 3. Pull and destroy the
product worldwide.
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Which do you choose?
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Your company lawyer explains that a recall
is not required by law
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because the criminal is fully responsible.
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She recommends the first option––
doing nothing––
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because recalling the product could
look like an admission of fault.
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But is that the most ethical strategy?
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To gauge the ethicality of each choice,
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you could perform a
“stakeholder analysis.”
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This would allow you to weigh the
interests of some key stakeholders––
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investors, employees, and customers––
against one another.
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With the first option
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your advisors project that the crisis
will eventually blow over.
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Sales will then improve but probably stay
below prior levels
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because of damage to the brand.
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As a result, you’ll have to lay off
some employees,
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and investors will suffer minor losses.
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But more customers could die if the
killer poisoned packages elsewhere.
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The second option is expensive
in the short-term
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and will require greater employee layoffs
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and additional financial
loss to investors.
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But this option is safer
for customers in the city
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and could create enough trust that
sales will eventually rebound.
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The third option is the most expensive
in the short-term
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and will require significant employee
layoffs and investor losses.
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Though you have no evidence that these
crimes are an international threat,
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this option provides the greatest
customer protection.
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Given the conflict between the interests
of your customers
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versus those of your investors and
employees,
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which strategy is the most ethical?
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To make this decision, you could
consider these tests:
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First is the Utilitarian Test:
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Utilitarianism is a philosophy concerned
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with maximizing the greatest amount of
good for the greatest number of people.
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What would be the impact of each
option on these terms?
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Second is the Family Test:
How would you feel
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explaining your decision to your family?
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Third is the Newspaper Test: how would
you feel reading about it
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on the front page of the local newspaper?
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And finally, you could use
the Mentor Test:
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If someone you admire were making
this decision, what would they do?
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Johnson & Johnson CEO James Burke
faced a similar challenge in 1982
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after a criminal added the poison cyanide
to bottles of Tylenol in Chicago.
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Seven people died and sales dropped.
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Industry analysts said the
company was done for.
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In response, Burke decided to pull Tylenol
from all shelves worldwide,
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citing customer safety as the company’s
highest priority.
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Johnson & Johnson recalled and destroyed
an estimated 32 million bottles of Tylenol
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valued at 250 million in today’s dollars.
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1.5 million of the recalled bottles were
tested and 3 of them––
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all from the Chicago area––
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were found to contain cyanide.
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Burke’s decision helped the company regain
the trust of its customers,
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and product sales rebounded within a year.
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Prompted by the Tylenol murders, Johnson
& Johnson became a leader
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in developing tamper-resistant packaging
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and the government instituted
stricter regulations.
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The killer, meanwhile, was never caught.
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Burke’s decision prevented further deaths
from the initial poisoning,
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but the federal government investigated
hundreds of copycat tampering incidents
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involving other products
in the following weeks.
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Could these have been prevented with
a different response?
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Was Burke acting in the interest of the
public or of his company?
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Was this good ethics or good marketing?
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As with all ethical dilemmas, this has
no clear right or wrong answer.
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And for your meatless burger empire,
the choice remains yours.