Ethics at Corning
Ethics of Decision-Making This paper will address the case of Dow Corning Corporation (Dow Corning) as it relates to its involvement with the sale of silicone implants that led to medical problems for its users. ... The paper will provide an insight into what skills were used and what skills were ignored in the decision of Dow Corning to manufacturer and sell the implants to the public. Dow Corning was one of the first firms to institute a code of ethics within the company, to create a senior level code of conduct committee, and to receive praise from many ethicists for being first in their field to have a full ethics awareness program (as cited in Hartman, 2001). The ethics code that was created in 1977 reads, “The watchword of Dow Corning Worldwide activities is integrity…We believe that business is best conducted and society best served within each country when business practice is based on the universal principles of honesty and integrity. ... Dow Corning held internal audits of all of the divisions of the company to ensure that they were acting ethically. ... Dow Corning was so committed to ethics that they required management to participate in the business conduct committee on a rotating basis; a minimum of 15% was to be spent on ethical issues. ... Dow Corning, however, decided to test the product for safety before they were released for sale. Dow Corning hired an independent laboratory to test the products and no evidence risk of cancer was found. By 1975, Dow Corning had started to produce a softer, more natural version of the implant to compete against other companies that were developing implants. ... Dow Corning did not feel that the product needed extensive testing since it was the same chemical base as the products that were developed earlier that did not have issues. ... Tests were run by Dow Corning that determined that the amount of bleed-through was no greater than the original product. ... Logic The premise of business ethicists’ beliefs that Dow Corning’s ethics initiatives were praiseworthy was how the company imbedded integrity and respect in its code of ethics (as cited in Hartman, 2001).