Businesses around the world focus on the sole aim of profit making and that is why ethical practices are often ignored. Business ethics help in dealing with various moral problems that arise in a business environment. This depends on the choices made between profit-maximization and ethical concerns. Therefore, for effective implementation of the business ethics, it is imperative to apply critical thinking involving reason’s conclusions and process. The case in discussion is based on a business ethical issue which requires Scott Bestor to deal with the case by keeping in mind the various people at stake, including him.
The stakeholders are all those who may be affected or have effect on the result. Therefore, in the case the stakeholders are the senior management, the shareholders, the suppliers and the workers/employees in the company. They are all influential in the projections of the sales and profit in a different manner. For example, the shareholders are the key stakeholders who are interested in the result. The senior management is the primary stakeholder who will be directly affected by the sales and profit of the company. The workers/employees are those who will be indirectly affected by the sales and profit of the company. Therefore, it is very important to do a stakeholder analysis before formulating the strategies.
The ethical issues that are involved in the case are that the assumption and computations that Scott Bector projected had an error. Also the projections and the assumptions taken were not challenged properly by asking questions. This is significant to critical thinking and is important for business to grow in this competitive environment. The major ethical issue therefore, at hand is that the assumptions for the projections have an error, and the short-term profit cannot negate or overlook this.
The possible alternative actions for Scott vary from one stakeholder to the other. Therefore, he has to analyze the cost involved in the error keeping in mind different stakeholders. For example, if Scott confesses his mistake and senior management decides not to expand, but assuming that the profit of the company materialized close to his projections if expansion would have been continued, then it is a huge loss to all the stakeholders. On the other hand, if Scott confesses and after bearing a minimal loss on expansion, relocation and hiring the company makes profits in the long run then it is a nominal loss or a profitable situation for them. The available option with Scott is to do an economic and cost analysis of the error and the effect new projections will have on the overall profit and sales of the company and their effect individually for the entire stakeholder, including himself in the long run.
