Essay About Individual Employees And Corporate Responsibility

Business Ethics
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From a business perspective, working under government
contracts can be a very lucrative proposition. In general, a stream of
orders keep coming in, revenue increases and the company grows in the
aggregate. The obvious downfalls to working in this manner is both
higher quality expected as well as the extensive research and
documentation required for government contracts. If a part fails to
perform correctly it can cause minor glitches as well as problems that
can carry serious repercussions, such as in the National Semiconductor
case. When both the culpable component and company are found, the
question arises of how extensive these repercussions should be. Is the
company as an entity liable or do you look into individual employees
within that company? From an ethical perspective one would have to
look at the mitigating factors of both the employees and their
superiors along with the role of others in the failure of these
components. Next you would have to analyze the final ruling from a
corporate perspective and then we must examine the macro issue of
corporate responsibility in order to attempt to find a resolution for
cases like these.
The first mitigating factor involved in the National
Semiconductor case is the uncertainty, on the part of the employees,
on the duties that they were assigned. It is plausible that during the
testing procedure, an employee couldnt distinguish which parts they
were to test under government standards and commercial standards. In
some cases they might have even been misinformed on the final
consumers of the products that they tested. In fact, ignorance on the
part of the employees would fully excuse them from any moral
responsibility for any damage that may result from their work. Whether
it is decided that an employees is fully excused, or is given some
moral responsibility, would have to be looked at on an individual
basis.
The second mitigating factor is the duress or threats that an
employee might suffer if they do not follow through with their
assignment. After the bogus testing was completed in the National
Semiconductor labs, the documentation department also had to falsify
documents stating that the parts had surpassed the governmental
testing standards. From a legal and ethical standpoint, both the
testers and the writers of the reports were merely acting as agents on
direct orders from a superior. This was also the case when the plant
in Singapore refused to falsify the documents and were later falsified
by the employees at the have California plant before being submitted
to the approval committees (Velazquez, 53). The writers of the reports
were well aware of the situation yet they acted in this manner on the
instruction of a supervisor. Acting in an ethical manner becomes a
secondary priority in this type of environment. As stated by Alan
Reder, . . . if they [the employees] feel they will suffer
retribution, if they report a problem, they arent too likely to open
their mouths. (113). The workers knew that if the reports were not
falsified they would come under questioning and perhaps their
employment would go into jeopardy. Although working under these
conditions does not fully excuse an employees from moral fault, it
does start the divulging process for determining the order of the
chain of command of superiors and it helps to narrow down the person
or department that issued the original request for the unethical acts.
The third mitigating factor is one that perhaps encompasses
the majority of the employees in the National Semiconductor case. We
have to balance the direct involvement that each employee had with the
defective parts. Thus, it has to be made clear that many of the
employees did not have a direct duty with the testing departments or
with the parts that eventually failed. Even employees, or
sub-contractors, that were directly involved with the production were
not aware of the incompetence on the part of the testing department.
For example, the electrical engineer that designed the defective
computer chip could act in good faith that it would be tested to
ensure that it did indeed meet the required government endurance
tests. Also, for the employees that handled the part after the testing
process, they were dealing with what they believed to be a component
that met every governmental standard. If it was not tested properly,
and did eventually fail,