The Ethics of Product Safety

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Recommended: Arguments For And Against Ethics In Business Dealings

What is safety worth, and just how much does safety cost when ensuring the rights of consumers are addressed appropriately? Finding the balance between production profits and Research & Development (R&D) in safety issues can be the difference between profits, profit loss, and Malevolent Disregard (Meel, M. & Saat, M., 2002). Even though profits and root earnings can make or break an organization, when the safety of the consumer is at risk, ethical decisions are required. Business ethics, within the law abiding countries, considers safety a consumer’s basic right. Laws are currently in place to protect both consumers and organizations in determining historical, current, and or future fault of unsafe products. Unfortunately, there are terms to be contended with that are ambiguous, being defined in individual, lengthy, maybe even perceived as non-seneschal. These terms include Malevolent Disregard (MD) and Consumer’s Relative Incompetence (CRI). The gist of ethical meaning in both terms can be misinterpreted and misrepresented, dependent upon the ethics of the leadership involvement (Meel, M. & Saat, M., 2002).
Literature Review
The Ethical Life Cycle of an Innovation (2002) clearly identifies four consumer rights of safety which are important to organizational ethics. Understanding that organizations producing products have the initial responsibility to identify safety problems is vital. These concerns are to be derived from the basics of the product’s use and common sence as it apply to the dangers perceived from this product. This, in of itself, has numberous possibilities to which the Consumer’s Relative Incompetence (CRI) must be applied. The linking of product safety directly to the CRI has permanently been ...

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...thics as it relates to profits (Head, 2005). Safety is a consumers right just as ethics are incorporated within organizations. Proving unethical behavior or MD is a matter to be decided in court.

Works Cited

Davila, T., Epstein, M., & Shelton, R. (2013) Making Innovation Work: How To Manage It, Measure It and Profit From It. Upper Saddle River, NJ:Pearson Education
Meel, M. & Saat, M. (2002) Ethical Life Cycle of an Innovation Journal of Business Ethics 21-27
They Knew and Failed to (n.d.) Retrieved February 21, 2014, from http://www.justice.org/clips/ theyknewandfailedto.pdf
Top 10 Bizarre or Frivolous Lawsuits (2009) Retrieved February 21, 2014, from http://listverse. com /2009/01/28/top-10-bizarre-or-frivolous-lawsuits/
Why Link Risk Management and Ethics?(2005) Retrieved February 21, 2014, from http://www. irmi.com/expert/articles/2005/head02.aspx

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