Running head: OBJECTIVE 6 ENTRY B
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Objective 6 Entry B
Katie Boone
McDaniel College
OBJECTIVE 6 ENTRY B
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Objective 6 Entry B
The case study that I completed on Johnson and Johnson’s (J&J) Tylenol (Jennings,
2009) is the artifact for my educational entry for objective six, recognize the constraints imposed
by the legal, organizational, cultural and social environments. I believe this artifact successfully
demonstrates my competency in this objective because I am able to objectively review the
situation, understand some of the ethical dilemmas the company faced as well as the business
impact of the decisions, and still recommend a proper course of action for the company. There
are many possible impacts on human resources related functions resulting from how the
company handled these dilemmas, including the possibility of employees losing their jobs due to
the company going under because of poor ethics or mismanagement of the crisis that took place.
It also had a strong impact on organizational culture, because the lower-level employees took
their lead on how to handle situations from upper-management. If upper management had
behaved unethically, then the culture would have begun adjusting to reflect poor ethics
throughout the organization.
J&J had a situation in the early 1980’s where several people died because of the product
that they were selling. Poison was found in a cross-section of Tylenol bottles in Chicago. These
packages of Tylenol had been tampered with, but J&J did not know when or where it had
happened. They decided to pull all packages of Tylenol from the shelves to prevent further
fatalities. In doing so, they proved that they were considering the public instead of their bottom
line, and earned the trust of millions of consumers. Jennings (2009) defines this action as
covered under the Utilitarian theory – a theory where ethical dilemmas are solved “by bringing
the greatest good to the greatest number of people” (p. 6). Because of their actions, J&J returned
to the market stronger than ever because of loyalty alone. Consumers felt that the company was
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looking out for their best interest, and employees felt as though they were working for a
company they could feel good about.
In considering corporate social responsibility, which J&J clearly had in this circumstance,
one must consider what corporate social responsibility means. “The U.S. society currently
encourages socially responsible businesses to take only those profit-making actions that improve,
or at least not harm, society, rather than create wealth for a privileged few” (Ruud, K. & Ruud,
W., 2011, p. 2). Using this loose definition, it could be argued that J&J only had a responsibility
to recall the product that was present in the stores from which the deceased individuals
purchased their Tylenol rather than recall all of the Tylenol that was distributed from that lot.
However, J&J took their viewpoint of corporate social responsibility a step farther and made a
decision that cost them over $150 million. Ethically, they made the only decision that they felt
was available.
There were no legal constraints on the organization to do anything other than investigate
the incident and recall the effected product. The company culture, however, would not allow for
a minimalist response. The J&J credo clearly puts consumers before the company, and for the
company, that meant accepting the loss by recalling the product. In this instance, the
organizational culture prevented the company from acting unethically. The additional benefit of
this, as Madu (2012) states, is “When leaders promote ethical culture, they become successful in
maintaining organizational growth, the good services demanded by the society, the ability to
address problems before they become disasters and consequently are competitive against rivals”
(p. 2). Essentially, by acting ethically, the company strengthened their internal culture as well as
their standing with society.
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J&J had a swift response to the tampering situation which gained customer loyalty.
However, there were other actions that J&J could have taken or had in place that would have
prevented the incident. Being aware of the possibility of tampering should have made creating
tamper-proof packaging and medication a priority. Focus was shifted from this, however,
because of J&J’s willingness to pull the product from the shelf and apologize.
Recently, J&J’s strong ethical standpoint has come into question:
Now several decades later, J&J’s Consumer Product Division has put the company and
its reputation in jeopardy by its slow and ineffective response to a series of ongoing
problems that center on inadequate quality control inside some of the manufacturing
plants and slow, reluctant, and ineffective corrective action in response to consumer
complaints and growing FDA concerns. The end result is broken trust with consumers
and growing damage to J&J’s once pristine reputation. (Stewart, K. & Paine, W., 2012, p.
2).
This raises the concern that changing management may result in the organizational ethics
changing. As a human resources professional, strong consideration of organizational fit should
be given to upper level candidates to ensure that the organizational ethics do not change when
management changes.
I believe that this artifact successfully demonstrates the mastery of competency six
because in looking at how J&J handled the situation where there were several available
decisions, the company clearly took the best course of action. There were several theories that
could have been utilized to defend the company if they had taken no action at all; gaining the
knowledge of theories of ethics such as the Utilitarian Theory has made me aware that there are
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many crutches available to condone unethical behavior. Being knowledgeable in these theories
allows me to argue for good ethics with valid arguments. However, the case study that I
completed looks over these actions and still adds additional courses of action that could be taken
to both be stronger as an organization and reinforce the organizational ethics while maintaining a
strong sense of corporate social responsibility to the outside society. This allows for
consideration of legal, social, organizational and cultural constraints on the possible decisions
that J&J could be making. The suggestions in my case study take all of those into account while
providing viable options to the company.
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References
Jennings, M. (2009). Business ethics: Case studies and selected readings. South-Western
Cengage Learning: Mason, OH.
Madu, B. (2012). Organization culture as a driver of competitive advantage. Journal of
Academic and Business Ethics. 5, 1-9.
Ruud, J. & Ruud, W. (2011). Law and ethics: Society and corporate responsibility: is the focus
shifting? Journal of Academic and Business Ethics. 4. 1-31.
Stewart, K. & Paine, W. (2012). Johnson & Johnson: An ethical analysis of broken trust. Journal
of Academic and Business Ethics. 5, 1-11.