Deck 1: Ethics and Business

Question 1

In a general sense,anyone who affects or is affected by decisions made within a firm can be called a business _____.

A)nominee
B)stakeholder
C)analyst
D)insider

Answer 1

B
Explanation: In a general sense,a business stakeholder will be anyone who affects or is affected by decisions made within the firm,for better or worse.Failure to consider these additional stakeholders will have a detrimental impact on those stakeholders,on stockholders,specifically,and on the firm's long-term sustainability as a whole.

Question 2

In a general sense,a business stakeholder is one who has made substantial financial investments in the business.

Answer 2

False
Explanation: In a general sense,a business stakeholder will be anyone who affects or is affected by decisions made within the firm,for better or worse.

Question 3

Which of the following best describes a business stakeholder?

A)Only the minority shareholders in a business entity
B)Only those who have acquired significant shares in a firm
C)Anyone who audits a firm
D)Anyone who affects or is affected by decisions made within a firm

Answer 3

D
Explanation: In a general sense,a business stakeholder will be anyone who affects or is affected by decisions made within the firm,for better or worse.

Question 4

Societies that value individual freedom legally stipulate codes of personal integrity and common decency to safeguard this freedom.

Question 5

In civil law,there is no room for ambiguity in applying the law because much of the law is established by past precedent.

Question 6

Values are the only guidance individuals need to act in ways that are positive or ethical.

Question 7

Which of the following statements is true about ethical decision making in business?

A)Ethical decision making is limited to the type of major corporate decisions with social consequences.
B)Every employee does not face an issue that requires ethical decision making.
C)All ethical decisions can be covered by economic,legal,or company rules and regulations.
D)Ethical decision making should rely on the personal values and principles of the individuals involveD.

Question 8

A firm's ethical reputation can provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace with customers,suppliers,and employees.

Question 9

Identify a true statement about ethical decision making in business.

A)Employees only have to deal with situations that call for ethical decision making once they reach managerial positions within organizations.
B)At some point,every worker will be faced with an issue that will require ethical decision making.
C)Companies are legally obligated to cover all ethical decisions by internal rules and regulations.
D)Ethical decision making should not rely on the personal values and principles of the individuals involveD.

Question 10

In business,every decision can be covered by economic,legal,or company rules and regulations.

Question 11

Ethical theories are patterns of thinking,or methodologies,to help us decide what to do.

Question 12

The Grayson-Himes Pay for Performance Act was passed to amend the executive compensation provisions of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

Question 13

Identify a true statement about ethical decision making in business.

A)Ethical decision making is not limited to major corporate decisions with dramatic social consequences.
B)Ethical decisions that employees make have to always be based upon clearly established guidelines laid down by the board of directors.
C)All ethical decisions can be covered by economic,legal,or company rules and regulations.
D)Every instance of ethical decision making should be based on the law of the lanD.

Question 14

Due to the high incidence of corporate frauds today,the direct costs of unethical business practice are less visible now than they have ever been before.

Question 15

Norms appeal to certain values that would be promoted or attained by acting in a certain way.

Question 16

Ethical values are personal codes of ethics that ensure that a person meets his or her individual standards of well-being.

Question 17

Ethical business leadership is the skill to create a work environment that helps employees guiltlessly embrace their own good and bad facets.

Question 18

Ethics refers to how human beings should properly live their lives.

Question 19

The well-being promoted by ethical values is not a personal and selfish well-being.

Question 20

Ethical decision making in business is limited to major corporate decisions with dramatic social consequences.

Question 21

_____ establish the guidelines or standards for determining what one should do,how one should act,what type of person one should be.

A)Roles
B)Attitudes
C)Norms
D)Laws

Question 22

Morality is the aspect of ethics that we can refer to by the phrase "_____."

A)personal freedom
B)individual rationality
C)personal integrity
D)persuasive rationality

Question 23

Which of the following is an approach advocated while teaching ethics?

A)Teachers should teach ethical dogma to a passive audience.
B)Teachers should consider acceptance of customary norms as an adequate ethical perspective.
C)Teachers should understand that their role is only to tell the right answers to their students.
D)Teachers should challenge students to think for themselves.

Question 24

Social sciences such as psychology and sociology are different from ethics owing to the fact that they are _____.

A)normative in nature
B)descriptive in nature
C)conjectural in nature
D)clinical in nature

Question 25

Identify the bill that was passed in April 2009 to amend the executive compensation provisions of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards.

A)The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Performance and Results Act
B)The Employee Pay Comparability Act
C)The Grayson-Himes Pay for Performance Act
D)The Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act

Question 26

Which of the following is a factor that distinguishes social sciences,such as psychology and sociology,from ethics?

A)Unlike ethics,these disciplines inquire why people act the way they do.
B)Unlike ethics,these disciplines are normative rather than descriptive.
C)Unlike ethics,these disciplines provide an account of how people should act.
D)Unlike ethics,these disciplines give directives about how people should act.

Question 27

Which of the following is a true statement about norms?

A)They are underlying beliefs that cause people to choose one way or another.
B)They are standards of appropriate and proper behavior.
C)They provide benchmarks of desirable societal conditions.
D)They consist of guidelines for bringing about positive behavioral change.

Question 28

Which of the following observations is true of ethics?

A)It is descriptive in nature.
B)It deals with our reasoning about how we should act.
C)It provides an account of how and why people act the way they do.
D)It is equivalent to law-abiding behavior.

Question 29

Ethics refers to the applications of _____ on which people's decisions are based.

A)values
B)morals
C)etiquettes
D)norms

Question 30

_____ seeks an account of the how and why people should act a certain way,rather than how they do act.

A)Sociology
B)Psychology
C)Ethics
D)Anthropology

Question 31

Philosophers often state that ethics is _____,which means that it focuses on people's reasoning about how they should act.

A)normative
B)derivative
C)circumstantial
D)clinical

Question 32

Identify the area of ethics that raises questions about justice,law,civic virtues,and political philosophy.

A)Stipulative ethics
B)Existential ethics
C)Virtue ethics
D)Social ethics

Question 33

Which of the following is a power granted to the Treasury secretary of the United States under the Grayson-Himes Pay for Performance Act?

A)Specifying which employees are eligible to be paid bonuses
B)Reviewing how companies give their bonuses
C)Reviewing the constitution of the boards of directors of companies
D)Specifying what criteria must be considered when elevating people to upper-management positions

Question 34

Which of the following refers to an underlying belief that causes people to choose between plausible courses of action?

A)Norms
B)Paradigms
C)Protocols
D)Values

Question 35

Individual codes of conduct based on one's value structures regarding how one should live,how one should act,what one should do,and what kind of a person should one be is sometimes referred to as _____.

A)morality
B)independence
C)leadership
D)rationality

Question 36

Which of the following best describes ethics?

A)An academic discipline that originated in the early 1900s
B)A descriptive approach that provides an account of how and why people do act the way they do
C)The study of how human beings should properly live their lives
D)A descriptive approach such as psychology and sociology

Question 37

The _____ discipline provides an account of how and why people do act the way they do.

A)descriptive
B)supererogatory
C)normative
D)stipulative

Question 38

The crux of normative ethics is that these disciplines:

A)presuppose some underlying values.
B)describe what people do.
C)should always involve the study or discipline of ethics.
D)branch away from social ethics to personal ethics.

Question 39

The aspect of business ethics that examines business institutions from a social rather than an individual perspective is referred to as:

A)decision making for social responsibility.
B)corporate cultural responsibility.
C)organizational ethical responsibility.
D)institutional morality.

Question 40

Which of the following is true about values?

A)Values are the highest standards of appropriate and proper behavior.
B)Corporate scandals prove the fact that individuals have personal values,but institutions lack values.
C)Values cannot lead to unethical results.
D)Values are underlying beliefs that cause us to act or to decide in a certain way.

Question 41

The failure of personal ethics among companies like Enron and WorldCom led to the creation of the:

A)Brooks Act.
B)Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
C)Clinger-Cohen Act.
D)Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Question 42

Which of the following is a true statement about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)?

A)What counts as a disability remains ambiguous under the law.
B)The law lays out clear-cut rules for reasonable accommodation.
C)The law has not been put into practice till date.
D)Mental disabilities have been left out of the purview of the law.

Question 43

In an organizational context,_____ is the skill of creating a circumstance in which good people are able to do good,and bad people are prevented from doing bad.

Question 44

To say that ethics is a _____ discipline is to say that it deals with standards of appropriate and proper behavior.

Question 45

Ethics requires that the promotion of human welfare be done:

A)based on the personal opinions of the decision maker.
B)based on the level of need of the beneficiaries.
C)understanding the religious beliefs of the beneficiary.
D)in a manner that is acceptable and reasonable from all relevant points of view.

Question 46

Telling organizations that their ethical responsibilities end with obedience to the law:

A)is just inviting more legal regulation.
B)is enough to maintain an ethical business environment.
C)reduces the frequency of corporate scandals.
D)eliminates ambiguity while making personal ethics-related decisions.

Question 47

Which of the following is the pursuit of the highest standard for what we should believe?

A)Theoretical reason
B)Notional reason
C)Emotional reason
D)Practical reason

Question 48

Reasoning about what should be done is known as _____ reasoning.

A)practical
B)objective
C)theoretical
D)predictive

Question 49

Which of the following observations is true?

A)Obedience to the law is sufficient to fulfill one's ethical duties.
B)The law is very effective at promoting "goods."
C)The law cannot anticipate every new dilemma that businesses might face.
D)An individual's ethical responsibility can never run counter to the law.

Question 50

_____ are beliefs and principles that provide the ultimate guide to a company's decision making?

A)Mission statements
B)Core values
C)Historical milestones
D)Vision statements

Question 51

_____ reasoning is reasoning about what we should believe.

A)Practical
B)Abstract
C)Theoretical
D)Descriptive

Question 52

Which of the following is the great arbiter of truth according to the tradition of theoretical reason?

A)Religion
B)Customs
C)Science
D)Norms

Question 53

Theoretical reasoning is reasoning about:

A)what we actually do.
B)what we should do.
C)what we should believe.
D)what we should implement.

Question 54

_____ is the aspect of ethics that is referred to by the phrase "personal integrity."

Question 55

Which of the following can be thought of as the answer to the fundamental questions of theoretical reason?

A)The scientific method
B)The practical approach
C)The contingency approach
D)The normative model

Question 56

A _____ is anyone affected,for better or for worse,by the decisions made within a particular firm.

Question 57

Dramatic examples of tyrannical regimes in history demonstrate that:

A)societies valuing freedom welcome laws that require more than the ethical minimum.
B)just societies can only be achieved through strict enforcement of ethical codes.
C)obedience to the law almost always makes people apathetic towards their ethical duties.
D)one's ethical responsibility may run counter to the law.

Question 58

_____ ethics asks us to simply step back from implicit everyday decisions to examine and evaluate them.

Question 59

Which of the following is a way of saying that a corporation has a set of identifiable values that establish the expectations for what is normal within the firm?

A)Organizational culture
B)Organizational policy
C)Organizational code
D)Organizational structure

Question 60

Practical reasoning is reasoning about:

A)what we should think.
B)what we should do.
C)what we should believe.
D)what we should share.

Question 61

Explain how the study of ethics was viewed until recently,and what kind of shift in focus has occurred post the scandals.

Question 62

While using the risk assessment model,what might the decision makers include in their assessment before taking action?

Question 63

Differentiate the concepts of morality and social ethics.

Question 64

Define risk assessment.

Question 65

One way to distinguish the various types of values is in terms of the ends they serve._____ values serve the end of beauty.

Question 66

Define values,and discuss the element of corporate culture in detail.

Question 67

Explain how ethical decisions are required to be made by every worker in a corporate setting,and how they have the capacity to influence more than just the decision maker.

Question 68

Explain the difficulties associated with telling a business that its ethical responsibilities end with obedience to the law.

Question 69

Acts and decisions that seek to promote human welfare are based on _____.

Question 70

Describe the two elements of ethical values.

Question 71

Why is "ethics" considered a normative discipline?

Question 72

_____ reasoning is reasoning about what we should believe.

Question 73

Define ethics.How is it different from social sciences such as psychology and sociology?

Question 74

Discuss the impact of maintaining that holding to the law is sufficient to fulfill one's ethical duties,and what it says about the law itself.

Question 75

Discuss the importance of precedents for most laws concerning business.

Question 76

Normative disciplines presuppose some underlying _____.

Question 77

Differentiate between practical reason and theoretical reason.

Question 78

Describe the advantages associated with ethical decision making.

Question 79

The _____ Act requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities.

Question 80

Discuss the hesitation (that may be justified)associated with teaching ethics.Explain briefly how the authors of this text believe that ethics can be taught constructively in a class.