Ethics At Corning
Submitted by srubin0824 on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
- Category: Business
- Words: 1710
- Pages: 7
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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 discuss the influence of the critical thinking tools, which include facts, logic, and arguments. 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 integrityÂ…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. We recognize that our social responsibilities must be maintained at the high standards which lead to respect and trust by society. A clear definition of our social responsibilities should be an integral part of our corporate objectives and be clearly communicated to every employee" (as cited in Hartman, 2001).
Dow Corning held internal audits of all of the divisions of the company to ensure that they were acting ethically. The audits did not show signs of unethical behavior at the time that they were being performed. 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.
Facts
When implants were first introduced in 1963, they were known as the Cronin implant and were initially used almost exclusively for reasons of reconstructive...
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