Law and the Judicial System Discussion

Corporations have a lot of influence over the economy, the community, and people. The traditional view of corporate responsibility is that a corporation has no additional social responsibility beyond making a profit for its shareholders. In more recent years, arguments have arisen with the belief that corporations have a high degree of social responsibility to people affected by the corporation’s decisions.

Case Example: Phishy Pharmaceuticals is a corporation that recently kicked off the sale of its new weight-loss pill, Lose It Fast. After three months of sales, the management team has received some troubling reports of some unanticipated side effects caused by the pill. The management team asks the accounting department to run some numbers to determine how much it would cost to recall Lose It Fast, to suspend manufacturing, and to conduct more tests to determine the pill’s safety and other possible side effects.

After running some numbers, the accounting department states that it would be more cost-effective to leave the product on the market shelves and propose settlement proceedings with anyone who is injured and initiates a lawsuit.

The corporate attorney has advised that the product states on the package that the pill is not FDA approved, and off-the-record has stated that everyone who buys a weight-loss product knows there are some risks involved, so it is likely that the majority of injured consumers will not initiate a lawsuit.

If you recall the product, it will result in a delay of dividends paid to shareholders and a loss in revenue, affecting shareholder profit. Consider the following questions regarding this example:

What would you do, and why?

Would you leave the product on the shelves because you feel your duty as a corporate manager is to maximize shareholder profits?

Would you recall the product because you feel the corporation owes a duty to the public, consumers, and the government in terms of social responsibility?

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.