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Marketing Ethics Essay

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Ethics Assignment This case study analyzes the experiences of Courtland Kelley at General Motors (GM). Courtland Kelley a third generation GM worker put his job on the line by pushing the GM managers and executives to fully respond to the safety issues found while working as a safety inspector at the company. Kelley along with his supervisor Bill McAleer first discovered the issues while auditing GM cars at rail yards across the country, a spot check of vehicles before the cars were cleared to be delivered to the dealers. McAleer was taken off the audit as a result, who subsequently sued the company seeking whistle-blower protection. The case was eventually dismissed by a judge in favor of GM. The judgement only increased Kelley’s …show more content…

According to this framework ethical/unethical decisions are controlled/moderated by three independent variables, which are individual factors, significant others in an organizational setting, and opportunity for action. According to Ferrell & Gresham the three variables can be further categorized into individual and organizational contingencies. Individual factors like attitudes, knowledge, values, and intentions are assumed to be interacting with organizational factors, such as significant others and opportunity factors to influence an individual involved in an ethical/unethical dilemma. In the following paragraphs we will analyze how these individual as well as organizational factors interplayed in Courtland Kelley’s situation at GM. Based on the individual factor construct of the framework it is assumed that knowingly or unknowingly an individual may use a set of philosophical assumption as a basis for making ethical decisions. The philosophical assumptions about ethics are divided into two basic types – teleological and deontological (Beauchamp and Bowie 1979). We can assume that Courtland Kelley exhibited teleological behavior

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