This document contains several business ethics case studies and questions: 1. The first case discusses marketing of an anonymous communication system called Publius and asks whether it is ethical, and if the creators or telecom companies could be responsible for criminal acts enabled by the system. 2. The second case involves automakers submitting vehicle plans to China, and asks about the ethics of this and what role (if any) the US government should play. 3. The third case discusses unequal pay between male and female employees at a retail store, and asks about the ethical obligations to change policies and different justifications for the pay differences. 4. The last case involves the music file sharing service Napster, asking

1. ARAVIND - 09901366442 – 09902787224
BUSINESS ETHICS
1. Analyze the ethics of marketing Publius using utilitarianism, rights, justice, and
caring. In your judgement, is it ethical to market Publius? Explain
2. Are the creators of Publius in any way morally responsible for any criminal acts that
criminals are able to carry out and keep secret by relying on Publius? Is AT &T in
anyway morally responsible for these? Explain your answers.
3. In your judgment, should governments allow the implementation of Publius? Why or
why not?
1.In your judgment, is it wrong, from an ethical point of view, for the auto companies to
submit plans for an automobile to China? Explain your answer?
2. Of the various approaches to environmental ethical issues raised by this case? Explain
your answer.
3. Should the U.S. government intervene in any way in the negotiations between U.S.
auto companies and the Chinese government? Explain.
1. In your judgment, do the managers of the Robert Hall store have any ethical
obligations to change their salary policies? If you do not think they should change, then
explain why they have an obligation to change and describe the kinds of changes they
should make. Would it make any difference to your analysis if, instead of two
departments in the same store, it involved two different Robert Hall Stores, one for men
and one for women? Would it make a difference if two stores (one for men and one for
women) owned by different companies were involved? Explain each of your answers in
terms of the relevant ethical principles upon which you are relying.
2. Suppose that there were very few males applying for clerks’ jobs in Wilmington while
females were flooding the clerking job market. Would this competitive factor justify
paying males more than females? Why? Suppose that 95 percent of the women in
Wilmington who were applying for clerks’ jobs were single women with children who
were on welfare while 95 percent of the men were single with no families to support.
Would this need factor justify paying females more than males? Why? Suppose for the
sake of argument that men were better at selling than women, would this justify
different salaries?
3. If you think the managers of the Robert Hall store should pay their male and female
clerks equal wages because they do “substantially the same work” then do you also think
that ideally each worker’s salary should be pegged to the work he or she individually
performs (such as by having each worker sell on commission)? Why? Would a

2. commission system be preferable from a utilitarian point of view considering the
substantial book keeping expenses it would involve? From the point of view of justice?
What does the phrase substantially the same mean to you?
1) What are the legal issues involved in this case, and what are the moral issues? How
are the two different kinds of issues different from each other, and how are they related
to each other? Identify and distinguish the “systemic, corporate and individual issues”
involved in this case.
2) In your judgment, was it morally wrong for Shawn Fanning to develop and release his
technology to the world given its possible consequences? Was it morally wrong for an
individual to use Napster’s website and software to copy for free the copy righted music
on another person’s hard drive? If you believe it was wrong, then explain exactly why it
was wrong. If you believe it was not morally wrong, then how would you defend your
views against the claim that such copying is stealing? Assume that it was not Illegal for
an individual to copy music using Napster. Would there be anything immoral with doing
so? Explain?
3. Assume that it is morally wrong for a person to use Napster’s website and software to
make a copy of copyrighted music. Who, then, world be morally responsible for this
person’s wrong doing? Would only the person himself be morally responsible? Was
Napster, the company, morally responsible?
Wash shawn Fanning morally responsible? Was any employee of Napster, the company,
morally responsible? Was the operator of the server or that portion of the Internet that
the person used morally responsible? What if the person did not know that the music
was copyrighted or did not think that it was illegal to copy copyrighted music?
4. Do the music companies share any of the moral responsibility for what has
happened? How do you think technology like Napster is likely to change the music
industry? In you judgment, are these changes ethically good or ethically bad?
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