Major Case Study Assignment
Early Draft
Spring 2005
Contact: Dr. Jan Garrett Basic Format: This page revised February 8, 2005
Length: 1000 words (4 pages at 250 words/page).
Title page and any drawings, quoted material, endnotes or bibliography are additional. Please give me an accurate word count, and be sure not to include the words in quoted material, notes, and bibliography.Title Page Contents: Title of paper, your name, PHIL 321, date turned in.
Pages: 8.5" x11", 1" margins and page number on each page except title page.
Text: 10-12 point font, typed or word-processed, with spelling checked, double-spaced.
Paragraph length: most paragraphs between 5 and 10 lines.
Page-linkage: staple, upper left-hand corner.
References, notes, etc.: See #5 under "Some Things to Bear in Mind" (below).Tentative Due Date: Tuesday, February 22, 2005, class time.
Choose a case "rich" enough to give you material for analysis and reflection. (You are aiming at four pages, after all.) The theories of Chapter 6 and/or the analysis of moral responsibility (Chapter 1) should be applicable to it, so cases of product defects or inappropriate product marketing or advertising ethics are especially appropriate (e.g., cases following Chapters 1 and 6; Ford Pinto, third world sweatshops producing goods sold in the U.S., Marketing Infant Formula, National Semiconductor). You can get descriptions of the Ford Pinto, National Semiconductor, or Infant Formula case from D 3 on the course website. The Ford Pinto case is also discussed in Velasquez, pp. 73-75. For Nike sweatshop case details see Nike in Indonesia. See Monthly Review (Feb 2002 issue) for a recent discussion of Reebok's overseas practices.
A new case that is an option is Merck and Vioxx. For information see Ten Worst Corporations of 2004 and scroll down.
Some cases on employer-employee relations (e.g., The Gap, V8: 503ff.; also Nike above) may be analyzed using Ch. 6 theories suitably modified. For example, you may substitute employer and employee for manufacturer and consumer/purchaser in the Contract or Due Care models.
Note that a party's partial responsibility for a joint action in which it participates can make a large marketing firm responsible for working conditions in factories of its "independent" suppliers, even in distant countries. (See also V8:458-63 if you are going to discuss a case concerning working conditions.)
Highly Recommended Approach (So far as the case study chosen permits) 1. Background or context (descriptive statements heavily derived from your sources). Keep initial background brief (no more than, say, 250 words). Integrate further descriptive material into your analysis and evaluative work. This material should be relevant to parts 3, 4, and 5.
2. Moral issues raised by the case.
3. If the Chapter 6 theories regarding producer-consumer or seller-buyer relationships are applicable, apply them to your case. What duties did the parties involved follow or fail to follow? What changes would a theory of ethical business dealings indicate? Does the attempt to use the theories to evaluate the case reveal any weaknesses in the theories themselves?
4. If the Chapter 6 theories do not seem to apply, evaluate the actions in the case using perspective of libertarianism and Rawlsian liberalism or Care Ethics from Chapter 2 in the textbook. Libertarianism can be understood as a modified version of Strict Father Morality and Rawls' theory of justice and Care Ethics can be understood as more or less refined versions of Nurturant Parent Morality. There are web pages devoted to Libertarianism, Rawls, and Care Ethics under "Ethical Theories" on the course web site.
5. How should moral responsibility and blameworthiness be assigned to groups and individuals involved? Use the concepts of excusing conditions and mitigating circumstances discussed in chapter 1 as appropriate. Explain your judgments. Support your conclusions.
Please see your instructor as soon as possible if you do not understand the assignment or if you wish more guidance about selecting a case to be discussed.
SOME THINGS TO BEAR IN MIND 1. Read and understand Prof. Joe Glaser's web page on plagiarism: (Course Website, item A. 3)
2. Triple check your grammar. Avoid sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and rhetorical questions.
3. Avoid padding, e.g., unnecessarily long quotes or facts irrelevant to the judgments you ultimately reach regarding moral issues, relevant moral standards, proper conduct in the situation, and assignment of responsibility. The words included in quoted material should not be included in your word count. It is a requirement for the course that the short paper, this paper, and the later topical paper must total at least 2800 words of original work. Use paraphrase rather than quoting where feasible.
4. State as clearly as possible the moral standards or principles used or needed.
5. For the Velasquez text, you may use embedded references, e.g., (V, 31), for p. 31 in Velasquez; for other sources, use footnotes, endnotes or embedded references with bibliography. Samples of the embedded reference style are:
(A. Smith, 31) for p. 31 in the book by A. Smith (when there is only one A. Smith entry in the bibliography) or
(A. Smith 1776, 31) for p. 31 in the A. Smith work published in 1776, when there is more than one A. Smith work in the bibliography. For web page citations, put the complete title, author (if known), URL, and date cited in endnotes or bibliography. Be sure you copy the URL accurately. (For embedded web page citations, use a unique author and/or title identifier and put the more complete information in a bibliography.)
6. Try to show familiarity with the issues and ability to apply the concepts and principles, covered so far in the course. This is a chance to integrate your awareness of general theory with relatively concrete facts.
7. I shall be looking for effective reasoning and presentations that are clear and coherent.
8. Avoid two opposite common mistakes: (1) refusal to make any normative judgments whatsoever; (2) mere expression of how you feel about what was done. Transform feelings into judgments based on evidence and reasoning that appeals to basic moral standards. If you cannot do this, perhaps you need to reorient your feelings. Of course, you may also need to integrate social and psychological generalizations, based on experience, history, or social-scientific research. (Keep in mind that implausible generalizations or unverified factual claims may be challenged.)