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Paper Topic #1: Business Ethics
You are the Regional Manager of retail grocery chain,PishPosh Foods. In addition to everyday grocery items like milk and bread, itknown for its delicious assortment of fancy international gourmet foods. Thechain is located in upscale urban centers where plenty of young professionalslive. For the past two days, the weather forecast had been predicting a hugesnowstorm to hit the city overnight tonight. The weatherman warned people toplan to be snowed in for a few days. You receive an email memo from corporaterequiring all hands on deck to handle the larger than anticipated crowds.Corporate decided to keep the store open until 2 am, abutting the time thesnowstorm is predicted to start. Just a month ago, staff was required to workuntil 4 am preparing for the quarterly health inspection. The store passed theinspection, but all employees received for their extra effort was a $10 coffeegift card. The PishPosh Foods Executive Team thought the overtime pay wasthanks enough. In reading the memo, you dread telling your staff the newsthatthey will all be required to work mandatory overtime, without noticeagain. Ofcourse, that might also mean the entire staff is snowed in and have to spendthe night in the storeagain. The memo outlines all the precautions: sleepingbags, a first aid kit, petty cash for pizza You call an informal staffmeeting. Of course, your staff is angry about the mandate. You allow them tovoice their concerns in the meeting, but it changes nothing. Everyone must stayat work until 2 am. Lina, a PishPosh cashier of 2 years, is especially angry.She thinks the company is awful for making employees work with such shortnotice. She fantasizes about quitting, but really needs her job. Irritated, shepulls out her smartphone and posts the following message on social media:O-M-G! PishPosh Foods is str8 trashthey dont value employees. They areforcing us to work in this snow yall! I feel like a slave! Havent they heardof the 13th Amendment! Dont shop here if you care about workers rights.#PishPoshSnowTyrants The message goes viral in a matter of minutes. Very fewpeople come to the store to shop. The storm ends up lighter than forecasted andno one had to sleep at the store. Everyone goes home at 2 am, as promised. Thenext morning, you arrive to open the store as usual. You are met with a largecrowd of angry protesters blocking your entrance to the marketdemandingjustice for PishPosh workers. There were tons of media and cameras. You evenrecognized a few PishPosh employees in the crowd. Frightened, you callcorporate who in turn calls the police to disburse the crowd. After everythingdies down, corporate instructs you to 1) close the store for the day, 2) notifyall the employees, and 3) to stop by headquarters for a meeting with theexecutive team. The Executive Board is requesting that you be prepared todiscuss the issues sparking the protest. As Regional Manager, they think youare best situated to assist them in creating a plan to increase Legal Environmentof Business Professor S. Williams Fall 2021 Paper Topic #1: Business Ethicscompany morale and public relations. They think it is about time they createsome sort of Code of Ethics. For the meeting, the Board want you to prepare ashort analysis, no more than 2 pages where you 1) explain the material issuesand potential business impacts, and 2) prepare recommend an approach to createPishPoshs Code of Ethics to manage through this employee/public relationsnightmare, and to prevent it from happening in the future.
