H.B. Fuller is Not Morally Responsible for the Addiction of Street Children to its Resistol Products
1. In your judgment, is H.B. Fuller morally responsible for the addiction of street children to its Resistol products?
In my opinion, H.B. Fuller is not morally responsible for the addiction of street children to its Resistol products. A corporation is morally responsible only for those acts and their foreseen injurious effects: (a) which the corporation knowingly and freely performed or brought about and which it was morally wrong for the corporation to fail to perform or prevent and/or (b) which the person knowingly and freely failed to perform or prevent and which it was morally wrong for the corporation to fail to perform or prevent. Only two conditions completely eliminate a person's moral responsibility for causing a wrongful injury: (1) ignorance and (2) inability. I believe that H.B. Fuller isn't morally responsible because once it released its product, it had neither control nor knowledge of how its product were to be misused. When understanding the circumstances of why H.B. Fuller's product was abused, H.B. Fuller actually helped out the economic problem by providing employment for the region. No argument can be made that H.B. Fuller did not make attempts to abort the misuse of its product. There is a fine line, however, between whether H.B. Fuller was morally responsible and if it had a moral obligation to intervene to help the issue.
To understand this issue from both sides, it is also important to gain a perspective from the corporate finance world. Understanding that the goal of a corporation is to maximize the profits of its shareholders, H.B. Fuller really did not have a social obligation. If, howe...
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...one that it did not do?
Although Fuller made every attempt it thought was necessary to prevent its products from causing harm, it could have provided more intervention. First, H.B. Fuller should have put more research into mustard seed oil and its effect on adhesives like the United States' chemical companies had done. Research into this solution would involve consulting with the FDA to solidify positive results. This could have very well been an easy solution to Fuller and the Latin American children. Second, Fuller should have decided to discontinue its product earlier than it did. If it did make this decision, then all sales should be eliminated, not just to retailers but to industrial vendors as well. Lastly, the company should have communicated more effectively with its parent company in the US to formulate a sound plan to addressing its ethical dilemma.
Peele, Stanton. "The Kids Are All Right -- They Didn't Become Addicts." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 28 Dec. 2009. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.
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Pagliaro, L. & Pagliaro, A. (2012). Handbook of Child and Adolescent drug and substance abuse: Pharmacological, Developmental, and Clinical Considerations. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, Inc.
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