Business Ethics: Avco Environmental

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For my paper I chose the case of Avco Environmental. The case is fictitious and can be found on the businessethics.ca linked provided in prezi. The facts of the case are Chantale Leroux, a clerk for Avco Environmental Services, which is a toxic waste disposal company, has found evidence that Avco might be disposing medical waste in the local municipal landfill. I feel this case violates seven of the ten primary traps and eight of the ten prima facie duties. In reading the case, you can separate Chantale the person from Avco Environmental the company and see who has violated what traps.

In looking at the ten primary traps from the Hoyk and Hersey book , seven of the ten traps were cause for the ethical failure. The first trap is obedience to authority. In this case if Chantale chooses not to call her friend who works for the newspaper, for fear of repercussions at work, she is then listening to her supervisors’ directions and keeping quite about the situation. Chantale may hold indirect responsibility for what could happen if some of the medical waste was to threaten public safety say by polluting a local water source. Another trap that goes along with indirect responsibility would be faceless victims, in were the company does not see one specific person or group of persons being affected rather as the trap states a faceless person were no feelings of guilt or remorse are attached.

Competition, tyranny of goals and money are three more traps violated in this case. Competition has more to do with the company rather than Chantale the person. Chantale can empathize why her superiors’ want to ignore the situation, because they are a smaller company and in competing against larger companies, they would not be able to m...

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... long as the inspections/audits were completely random and only the very top management officers were privy to the reports than employees could feel as though they were constantly being watched and not participate in wrongdoing. A hot line that was sent to an outside source is also a good tool for monitoring any wrongdoing and gives the whistle blower a since of anonymity. The last tool that could help Avco prevent future problems is to have regular company outings were the employees could see where the waste was going and how it is being disposed of properly and that by doing the right thing they were saving the environment.

Works Cited

Whistle blowing & the Environment: The Case of Avco Environmental www.businessethics.ca/cases/wb-env1.html (March 29, 2010).

Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey, The Ethical Executive (Stanford: Stanford Business Books, 2008)

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