Re: Too many redshirts?

tony cooper <tony_cooper213@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 07:57:01 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It's a bit difficult to compare the cases for many reasons,
including the fact that in most cases HP's customers *do* buy their
products with the expectation that they can (within a certain
period) return them and get their money back with no questions
asked.


A better example of what I was alluding to in the morality in
business issue is if a company sells direct to the public as well as
through distributors (as HP does), what should an employee do when
faced with a moral dilemma such as receiving a purchase order from
the ANP for the company's products?

I think the problem here is that we're looking at two different
issues: me at what I believed you to be describing and you at what you
meant to describe. What I was seeing was a company with a default
policy of not issuing refunds except in exceptional circumstances and
(my) seeing it as promoting intolerance to decide (apparently
officially) that the expected presence of large numbers of gay people
constituted such an exceptional circumstance. You, on the other hand,
now appear to be seeing a company with a default policy of issuing
refunds to honestly disgruntled patrons and seeing that it would be
discriminatory against homophobic patrons and "enforcing tolerance" to
refuse refunds to them if their offesne was due to being confronted by
large numbers of gay people. If that's the case, I quite agree.

In the situation you describe here, I'd say that clearly, unless the
company has a specific policy that would prohibit the sale, the
employee should fill it. Just as, if an employee really likes an
organization that the company has a policy prohibiting selling to, the
employee shouldn't fill it.

The employee knows that the product will be used to promote a cause
that he thinks is morally reprehensible, but by an organization that
has a legal right to exist.

As an individual, that employee may not want to deal with that
organization in any way. As an employee, he may have to. Sure, he
can duck the issue and pass the purchase order along to someone else
to handle, but that doesn't stop the ANP from receiving the product
from the employer and being able to use it to promote an immoral
cause.

Should the company adopt a written policy that they will not accept
orders from the ANP and similar organizations? If so, who in the
company decides which organizations should be banned, and on what
basis should the decision be made?

That would be up to the company (unless, of course, there's a legal
requirement, as there might be with customers with known ties to
terrorist organizations) and would probably be made pretty high up in
the company.

If the company does adapt such a policy, what is "immoral"? Easy
enough with the ANP, the KKK, WBC (Westboro Baptist Church and Fred
Phelps' group) and some others, but what about a cosmetic
manufacturer who uses animal testing? Some think that to be
immoral.

I'd give a private company a lot of leeway here, but I'd hope that
they'd realize that whatever decision they made would reasonably be
taken as a statement of corporate beliefs. Both in terms of companies
banned and in terms of companies *not* banned, if others are.

This is not totally unrelated to the park refund issue for Disney
during Gay Days. The objection that you have is that Disney is
participating in intolerance (an immoral act) by allowing a person
to receive a benefit because that person considers someone else to
be doing something immoral and they don't want to be around that
someone else.

As I hope I clarified above, that is *not* my objection. If there's a
benefit like that open, by default, to all, I wouldn't expect it to be
withheld on the basis of who the customer is or why they qualify. But
if there isn't normally such a benefit, I think that it would be
participating in intolerance to extend it specifically to those who
dislike being around certain other customers, which is what I took you
to be describing.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The vast majority of humans have
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |more than the average number of
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |legs.

kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx
(650)857-7572

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


.

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