Term
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Definition
| The increase in temperatures around the globe due to rising levels of greenhouse gases. |
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Term
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Definition
| The undesirable and unintended contamination of the environment by human activity such a s manufacturing, waste disposal, burning fossil fuels, etc. |
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Term
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Definition
| Carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons = gases that absorb and hold heat from the Sun, preventing it from escaping back into space much like a greenhouse absorbs and holds the Sun's heat. |
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Term
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Definition
| The gradual breakdown of ozone gas in the stratosphere above us caused by the release of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into the air. |
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Term
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Definition
| Occurs when sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides are combined with water vapor in clouds to form nitric acid and sulfuric acid. These acids are then carried down in rainfall. |
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Term
| V. Major types of Air Pollution |
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Definition
• Greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide,
• Ozone depleting gases: chlorofluorocarbons
• Acid rain gases: sulfur oxides
• Airborne toxics: benzene formaldehyde, toluene, trichloroethylene, and 329 others.
• Common air pollutants: carbon monoxide, sulfur oxids, nitrogen oxides, airborne lead, ozone, particulates. |
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Term
| V. Depletion of Fossil Fuels |
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Definition
| Until the early 1980s, fossil fuels were being depleted at an exponentially rising rate. Experts point out that our consumption of a resource cannot continue rising at exponential rates. As reserves of any resource shrink, they become increasingly difficult, and therefore more costly to extract, which in turn slows down their depletion rates. Consequently, although the rates at which reserves of a resource are depleted may rise exponentially for a period, the rising costs of extraction eventually cause the rates to peak and then begin to decline without complete depletion ever being attained. Coal will probably peak in about 150 years; and the US reserves of natural gas has already peaked (1970) and is expected to decline gradually after the next 30-40 years |
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Term
| VI. Contract view of the business firm's duties to its customers |
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Definition
| The view that the relationship between a business firm and its customers is essentially a contractual relationship, and the firm's moral duties to the customer are those created by this contractual relationship. |
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Term
| VI. Due care theory of the manufacturer's duties to consumers |
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Definition
| The view that because manufacturers are in a more advantaged position and consumers must rely on them, they have a duty to take special care to ensure that consumers' interests are not harmed by the products that they offer them. |
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Term
| VI. Social costs view of the manufacturer's duties to consumers |
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Definition
| The view that a manufacturer should pay the costs of any injuries caused by defects in the product, even if the manufacturer exercised all due care in designing, making, and marketing it, and the injury could not have been foreseen. |
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Term
| VI. Problem with Due Care |
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Definition
| The basic difficulty raised by the "due care" theory is that there is no clear method for determining when one has exercised enough "due care". That is, there is no hard-and-fast rule for determining how far a firm must go to ensure the safety of its product. |
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Term
| VI. Criticisms of the Social Cost View |
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Definition
• Unjust to manufacturers since compensatory justice says one should compensate injured parties only if the injury was foreseeable and preventable.
• Falsely assumes that the social cost view prevents accidents; instead, encourages consumer carelessness by relieving them of responsibility for their injuries.
• Has increased the number of successful consumer lawsuits which imposes heavy losses on insurance companies, and makes insurance too expensive for many firms; however studies show only a small increase in lawsuits and insurance firms remain profitable. |
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Term
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Definition
| The wrongful act of distinguishing illicitly among people not on the basis of individual merit, but on the basis of prejudice or some other invidious or morally reprehensible attitude. |
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Term
| VII. Discriminatory Practices |
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Definition
• Recruitment Practices - Firms that rely solely on the word-of-mouth referrals of present employees to recruit new workers tend to recruit only from those racial and sexual groups that are already represented in the labor force.
• Screening Practices - Job qualifications are discriminatory when they are not relevant to the job to be performed (e.g. requiring a high school diploma for an essentially manual task in places where minorities statistically have had high secondary school dropout rates). Aptitude or intelligence tests used to screen applicants become discriminatory when they serve to disqualify members from minority cultures who are unfamiliar with the language, concepts, and social situations used in the tests, but who are in fact, fully qualified for the job. Job interview are discriminatory if the interviewer routinely disqualifies women and minorities by relying on sexual or racial stereotypes,
• Promotion practices - promotion, job progression, and transfer practices have discriminatory outcomes when employers place white males on job tracks separate from those open to women and minorities. Seniority systems will be discriminatory if past discrimination has eliminated minorities and women from the higher, more senior positions on the advancement ladder. Also, when promotions rely on the subjective recommendations of immediate supervisors, promotion policy will tend to be discriminatory to the extent that supervisors rely on racial or sexual stereotypes.
• Conditions of employment - wages and salaries are discriminatory to the extent that equal wages and salaries are not given to people who are doing essentially the same work.
• Discharge - Firing an employee on the basis of race or sex is a clear form of discrimination. Less blatant but still discriminatory are layoff policies that rely on a seniority system in which women and minorities have the lowest seniority because of a past discrimination and so are last to be considered for promotion and first to be considered for layoffs. |
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Term
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Definition
| The act of buying and selling a company's stock on the basis of "inside" information about the company. |
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Term
| VIII. The Employer's Obligations to the Employee |
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Definition
| The basic moral obligation that the employer has toward employees, according to the ration view of the firm, is to provide them with compensation they have freely and knowingly agreed to in exchange for their services. There are two main ethical issues related to this obligation: the fairness of wages, a special problem in developing nations, and the fairness of employee working conditions. |
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Term
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Definition
Employees have the rights to
• both psychological (privacy regarding one's inner thoughts, plans, beliefs, values, feelings, and wants) and physical (privacy with respect to one's physical activities, particularly those that reveal one's inner life and those that involve physical or personal functions that are culturally recognized as private).
• Relevance - the employer must limit inquiry into the employees' affairs to those areas that are directly relevant to the issue at hand.
• Consent - Employees must be given the opportunity to give or withhold their consent before the private aspects of their lives are investigated.
• Methods - The employer must distinguish between methods of investigation that are both ordinary and reasonable, as well as methods that are neither. Ordinary methods include the supervisory activities that are normally used to oversee employees' work and that employees can be presumed to know about and to consent to as part of their explicit or implicit contract with the firm. Extraordinary methods include devices like hidden microphones, secret cameras, wiretaps, lie detector tests, personality inventory tests and spies.
• The right to freedom of Conscience - requires that individuals not be forced to cooperate in activities that they conscientiously believe are wrong. |
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Term
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Definition
| An attempt by a member or former member of an organization to disclose wrongdoing in or by the organization. |
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