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Ethical dilemma: The burger murders - George Siedel and Christine Ladwig

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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.
Title:
Ethical dilemma: The burger murders - George Siedel and Christine Ladwig
Speaker:
George Siedel and Christine Ladwig
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TED-Ed
Duration:
05:25
lauren mcalpine approved English subtitles for Ethical dilemma: The burger murders
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Tara Ahmadinejad edited English subtitles for Ethical dilemma: The burger murders

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