Interesting business case review – Taking a Business Decision based on Ethical intensity and Social Responsibility

This review of a chapter from a famous management book reflects on a sample business case when a company which was moving towards bankruptcy was offered a fund raising deal which might help her to to be saved. Read along the review as how we could apply ethical intensity and social responsibility to attach points to such a decision making situation. This chapter is useful in business decision making process.

The problem here, is, whether accepting the fundraising offer from the FastCheck company will affect the goodwill and credibility of CAP. CAP on the other side, also need to avoid bankruptcy by accepting the offer. Deriving the ethical intensity will help CAP to choose the appropriate decision. Ratings on the six ethical intensity factors goes as follows –

Magnitude of consequences – 5 (The decision to accept the offer will be harmful to CAP’s goodwill and harmful to poor families by getting them trapped to high interest rates and making their life miserable. Its will be against CAP humanitarian mission)

Social consensus – 4 (majority believe that accepting the offer is harmful)Probability of Effect – 4 (its almost sure that harm is going to happen)

Temporal Immediacy – 2 (people actually getting trapped or loss of goodwill will happen gradually)

Proximity of effect – 4 (CAP works closely with the low income group)Concentration of effect – 4 (on an average basis)

Total points = 22

The above analysis brings into light how ethically intense will be the decision to accept the offer.

The high point of 22 over 30 shows that the decision to accept the offer will not be wise, ethically. Particularly, high points on the first three factors (13 over 15) shows that the ethical intensity of the decision is high and that CAP should not accept the offer.

References:

1. Williams C. (2007). Management: Ethics and Social Responsibility (4th ed., ch. 4). Thomson South Western.