Would you sacrifice 1 person to save 5? Unpack this famous ethical dilemma with our video on the trolley problem: bit.ly/TEDEdTrolley Or learn how the efforts of one scientist at the FDA prevented a national health crisis: bit.ly/FrancesKelsey
Johnson and Johnson was definitely not in the same situation as what we were given. Due to the fact that it sold multiple kinds of goods, if it withdrew all the bottles it increased customer trust and support and they bought other products in larger quantities. Also the company's size was massive and definitely had the money to rebuild from the start
Also, if it were food, the first order of business would be to test the product for harmful compounds. Next to see if there was an issue on the other end. Like poor storage
@@Ikajo A point against the Burger Company is that your product expires within X days. Tylenol last years. The amount of loss from pulling it citywide, and then implementing stricter packaging processes worldwide, while simultaneous submitting to the media that people should know the truth, would honestly be the most ethical and least expensive option. Save the Customer, Save the World.
Johnson and Johnson have had multiple health dilemmas surrounding their products. While what they did for the company was good at that time today their talc baby powder causes problems.
That killer could only go so far, but the video mentioned copy cat killers. If there is a security flaw in the product, pulling worldwide allows for those flaws to be fixed and relies on the safety of the product, not the safety of a lack of killers.
@@lewdcharizard9902 yep happened with the Tylenol murders as seals were now added to over the counter medicines and new federal laws were put in place.
I thought the same thing but I think it depends on where you find the contaminated food. If it's JUST in stores in a specific area then the tapering was done post-production. If it's outside of it then there is a chance that the tapering was done during manufacture or shipping. Bells Ice cream had that issue a few years back and recalled everything worldwide.
There's however one more crucial thing to consider: We don't know anything about the killer's motives. Especially we don't know whether she will really stop or just choose another brand instead.
More deaths is considered in the customer risk estimates. The motive doesn’t matter because the end result is always the same, more people will be fearful and some may even be poisoned if you don’t recall.
And usually if someone asks you an ethical question in an interview and then says "there is no right or wrong answer" they're lying. There is always a right answer with them. It's a trap to trick you into speaking your mind so they can evaluate your true personal beliefs. Although technically with ethics issues it's mostly true there usually isn't a right answer, there is often a wrong answer hidden away in there to trip people up. The question of course, is largely irrelevent in either case. Most companies or businesses will happily tread through ethical concerns as if they don't exist, and even holding ethical considerations as a priority could lose you the position if you're honest. And philosophically the question doesn't matter either. Because these issues cannot be resolved without someone with the courage to back up their principles with action that corrosponds to the desired outcome. And most people do not have that. Particularly those armchair philosophers and teachers sitting in their comfy homes and classrooms so divorced from the real world consequences of any actions. It's a huge task to put your own business at risk just to potentially save a few lives. Or perhaps in a different context, it's a huge ask for an individual to put themselves last to help others. Most of the time we will think for ourselves and only for ourselves. Even if we hold philosophical points of view that might differ. That's not people being cruel, we just default to what will protect ourselves first. At least in most individual focused societies. Other societies may differ in the gut response to these kinds of issues.
@@Madhattersinjeans I hated that they didnt give the option for you to basically sacrifice your money and livelihood to protect your customers, even if it wouldn't make the most sense. You have to tell these employees that they are being let go because of some unaffiliated guy poisoning a few products. That ain't right
@@michaeljohnson905 That's actually what all three options are. Your business is both your livelihood as well as that of all of your employees. If you do nothing, you put customer lives at risk, putting sales at risk, putting your business at risk, and therefore your livelihood as well as that of all of your employees at risk. Similarly, if you put out a city wide recall, you put a number of employees' livelihoods at risk but might save customers assuming it wasn't an isolated incident. Sales could also never pick up after putting tamper resistance/evidence measures into place or completely tank, putting your business, therefore your livelihood as well as that of all of your employees at risk. The same is true in a world wide recall. The only way you could put your own livelihood at risk without potentially putting employees' livelihoods at risk is to sell the company, which is to effectively pass the decision on to someone else. You would no longer have any income from that business and would no longer have any way to impact its decisions and may even be the one everyone puts their blame on, especially if the threat goes away as soon as you do sell the business. The new owner would still have to make the decision, or you would still have to make the decision before anyone would buy, as to what to do about the potentially contaminated product. All of this because some unaffiliated guy decided to poison a few products.
To be honest, I feel like the answer to this question depends on how successful the company is. If it were as large of an enterprise as Johnson and Johnson, I think that we could potentially take the hit and take the burgers off the shelves worldwide until the killer(s, we don't know if they're working with an organization) are caught. If not, we should only recall them city-wide.
But if you hadn't caught the killers already taking them off world wide means the killers won't show up. They accomplished their goal, won, and stopped. City Wide at best would work, at worst they go to a new city and repeat it.
It can be both but it's also interesting to consider if it's primarily one over the other and if that effects the decision making process and ethics involved. If you make a selfish decision that ends up benefitting everyone by sheer luck, does it become an ethical decision after the fact by it's outcome or does it remain an unethical decision regardless due to it's motive? It's easy to judge a decision as right or wrong after the fact when everything works out for the best, but what if it hadn't? If the next CEO put in this position pulls the product worldwide and their brand DOESN'T bounce back, did they make the right choice because they saved lives or did they make the wrong choice because they hurt the company without payoff? And if you think that saving lives should always take precedence over financial loss, keep in mind that there was no evidence that this issue extended beyond the city and in fact their testing confirmed as much, ergo no additional lives were saved by expanding the scope of the recall.
I feel like there’s other things to consider beyond what my team proposed. For one, we aren’t Johnson & Johnson, we don’t sell any other products beyond what was poisoned. So there’s that to consider. One option could be to recall all in the city and take random batches from every distributor to see if there are other areas being poisoned, then act accordingly. You could also alter the packaging of the burgers to even a tiny needle would be noticeable, preventing future tampering as J&J did. Perhaps petition for an increase security in local grocery stores, as the burgers were allegedly in the stores when tampered, so a portion of responsibility falls on them.
Yep, I'd do same and I'd add some extras to this: pulling the burgers out and recording there'd they come from, then see which shops had poisoned ones and how many to determine there to search the killer and ask these places to provide security cameras records to catch the killer.
@@stacykrasnikova7744 The area to pull the products depends on the location of the stores. If they were right next to each other chances are that the killer lives in the area and city wide would be more than enough. If they were across town near bus/subway lines, everywhere within 10 miles of the area of public transportation. If they were far and one had no public transit I would pull from the whole state. Recording the stores that the poison was in would be valuable data and help the police narrow down the suspects.
But are you willing to bet people's lives that the killer wont leave the area where the product is pulled? Or that someone in a different area wont do the same thing after they learn of a vulnerability in the product?
I don't know, my answer was instantly 'do nothing'. Because if a plane gets hijacked it's not really the fault of companies responsible for plane manufacturing. Or even better, 'do nothing with the existing product, but invest in more secure packaging for next batches'. That makes the most sense to me. An old product would have to be cheaper (to be sold out) but will have some risk attached to it. The customer then could choose between risk and price. Seems the fairest to me., however, I'm not sure my arrangement would actually work in practice.
@@h3ckNo well I’d say the 2nd is still the best option because let’s be honest, no ones gunna die if you pick number 1, because no one, in that area at least, will buy anything. If I knew like Heinz sold poisoned ketchup I’d just buy a different brand. So you maybe won’t lose money short term but even if you improve packaging, people might not know of the improved packaging and the poisoned ones are still on the shelves so they still won’t buy anything. It would be most profitable long term to recall everything in the area because that way you probably will get a decent amount of publicity and develop some trust between the consumers and your brand. Long term I’d say it makes the most sense.
@@h3ckNo If a plane gets hijacked and you do nothing just because you don't want to spent money even when lives are at risk there is definitely something wrong with you...
well but if they do nothing then most of the workers in short-term will still have their job. no one knows how long it will take to pull the products back either only in the city or worldwide. the investors would also lose money and that might discourage them to continue investing. eh, just sayin you know ?
Do nothing option is best for the employees who would have to be laid off otherwise. The second option is the best for stockholders while the third option is best for consumers. In my opinion, anyway.
This happened here in India too. A government report cited that a certain batch of the popular instant noodles brand Maggi had excess amounts of monosodium glutamate in it. The people were so scared that for quite nobody would buy instant noodles at all. Even Maggi's competitors in the market like Yippee, Smith & Jones, Wai Wai etc were also severely affected. But now the sales have picked up & Maggi has recovered from it.
But how did maggi respond? I think it chose the first option didn't it? Because at first the problem started as 'children sick after eating Maggi' and that kind of evidence -less headline. And after that, that Batch of maggi failed the tests for msg and lead.
@@khushbooprasad6519 I don't think Maggi had to do anything because the government had already banned it. But Maggi was always too big to get affected forever, everyone knew it would recover after clearing the test.
Yeah I thought it would be like “and you found out that real meat had been slipped into the product for years without anyone knowing and you have to chose whether to confess and lose your business and probably get fined, or not”
I think it was there just to give the killer motivation. Some corners of the meat industry are fighting really hard to resist change, although violent resistance is more likely to come from the public.
everyone arguing at the board meeting the boss staying quietly in the end of a long table with hands clutched and over his forhead his eyes shrouded in shadow as everyone was arguing the boss unraveled his hands stood up and with harsh and uncompromising voice said "pull the meat out"
“uhh... ok? *burger is storebought* “Looks yum!” *takes large bite* “Oh, these are those _insert brand that was poisoned_ burgers!” “Wha-“ *burger slips from hand* “AHANEHDHEHSHEGRHD” *loud thud sound as you fall on to the ground* “Good, you’re finally dead. Now it’s time to...” *horror music starts playing* “RULE THE WORLD!” *_dun dun DUNNNN..._*
Ultima DoombotMK1 Hrm... *1 week later, wife is coming home from work* “Hi hunny!” *wife drops bag and collapses to the ground* “How are you still alive?” *cackles evilly* “Don’t you remember, the poison in the 🍔 s was 🐍 venom? And since my father was a 🐍 , it only knocks me out!” *wife gasps* “Wait, does this mean...?” *grins mischievously* “Yes, darling. I’m a giant 🐍 .” *legs turn into 🐍 tail, head disappears and 2 🐍 heads sprout from neck, skin turns green and a blue 🐓 sits on head* “Now, time to finish you!” *wife cries in pain* “YOU CAN’T KILL ME! I CARRY YOUR 👶 !” *wife reaches into 👜 to show a turquoise 🐐* “YES I CAN! I DON’T CARE BOUT THAT 🐐” *thinks for a second* “Wait, why is it a 🐐 ?” *horror music plays* “OH NO!” *wife rises* “You’re right, husband. This 🐐 ... is not yours. It is... YOUR 🧀’s!” *gets bored* “So what if the 🧀 owns the 🐐 ? I don’t care.” *wife smiles* “Hehe...” *groans* “Did you forget I am a giant 🐍 -human hybrid?” *CHOMP!* “Yum, 🐓 dinner.” *the 🐓 on his head gets appalled, grows 10 feet tall, and swallows the 🐍 whole* “Deary me, these insolent beings do make an interesting story. Now I must-“ *the 🐓 gets swallowed whole by turquoise 🐐* “Wowee, my mother sure tastes delicious!” _ps, I felt the need to stuff it full of emojis._
Going by the utilitarian view, recalling products country-wide eliminates the majority of the risk to the public and avoids the most damaging outcome to employee's/investors. It also practically ensures a complete recovery to the company. Doing nothing is irresponsible, but a global recall would guarantee additional damage in order to avoid an almost non-existent risk.
When it's phrased as "Do you do whats best for you or best for everybody else" you create a false dilemma. Option 2 is good for both the company and the public. It's not a zero sum game.
Exactly. The small short term loss of option 2 is likely to hurt less than the bad press and lower sales of the first option and the monstrous overdone response of the third. It's a relatively easy choice, especially since it shouldn't cost enough to force layoffs.
It's funny you say that as the real life example of this did decide to not only take option 3 which was the most extreme option but while taking losses in profit people were hired to create a new design to protect the pills from being poisoned.
I’d go with option 2 then start an advertising campaign to clarify that you are not at fault. And go with number 3 if you want to get the public on your side.
More likely Option 2 would entail a larger geographic region than just the city, but yeah, doing a global recall wouldn't make any sense unless you suspect that it was either a factory worker or somebody who had access to burgers being distributed globally.
Yeah, not exactly what i thought, but at least option 1 is not an option. The only Question is local or global reaction, which is in the end more a marketing thing. Global simply sounds better. But my first thought at the set-up eas to invent temper-resistant packaging. There is no dilemma...
Something like this happened a few years back in Australia in which various people including copycats were putting needles into strawberries during the harvesting or packaging stages before they were distributed nationwide
@@victor9 why would it be? Unless you knew that it was the one that was poisoned. Or you mean that you die from meatless burger cuz it was meatles? If the second than def yes, afterall only lunatic would eat such burger anyway. There'S no burger without meat.
It becomes much more plausible like this "Take down all the products world wide if I am big name brand as j&j : sure my current market would take a huge hit but there is a way to make use of the situation. Now I can use the amount of loss to create campaign of the amount of care we take in our counsumer health. Hence , we can make subtle nods at my product being more healthy than the competition. Another thing is doing a interveiw with a popular news channel showing extreme sadness as what has occured has deeply scarred me as I have only tried to help by my products. This would help create trust and compassion which will help my product sell more. " I could think of more stuff but it's 4 a.m and I need to sleep
By pulling my product worldwide and re-issuing new "Tamper Resistant" packaging, I am making all my competitors look bad. I was going to take a hit anyway, but now I force the competition to take the hit as well by offering a competitive edge. Customers are now looking for this "safety seal" on all their medicine and everybody has to tool up to comply.
The second option seems the best in my opinion. While there is risk of copycats, removing them citywide could contain the poisoner. But I do think that ballsy move from the johnson and johnson fellow was a prime example of the benefit of selfish ethics. He both prevented further poisonings and improved his reputation with a single action by removing all of the tylenol.
Option two, removing and destroying the product city-wide does not solve the problem of loyal and repeat customers trusting in the safety of your product. This is because all customers are not equal. Most, loyal customers will want the corporation to rectify the situation if a criminal is not yet caught. Frequent customers will not want to participate in a Russian Roulette poisoning if they ingest your product. If the corporation isn't doing anything, like tamper-proof packing, they will not come back and less frequent customers will be gone for good.
I worked for J&J in the early 2000s. We were all taught this story and customer safety was drilled into us as the most important thing. And yes, as someone else said, this case is taught in business ethics courses.
OMG about a minute in all I could think of was Tylenol, so glad you brought it up. It still shocks me that they never found the killer, but at the same time it changed the industry.
The question for the future is: "what are the logistics of bringing more people over time into that blessed space in which good ethics is the same as good marketing?"
@@harshita.07 All that SD is nonsense. There is safe, effective, and affordable treatments and even prevention according to droves of MDs. They keep burying the truth. Too much money can be made by b I g p h a r m a for them to not take advantage of this manufactured crisis.
This reminds me of the case where some painkillers were poisoned. Johnson and Johnson pulled the product from shelves and changed the packaging so it couldnt be tampered with anymore. EDIT: Haha just got to the point where it was mentioned lol
This is a very interesting topic. No matter how hard you try to minimize the negative effects, something bad can and will come from your decision. If you have enemies, they will use that against you, and you can have people turn on you for making what seemed like the best decision to you without the hindsight of what it could do. If more people understood this then maybe there would be less outrage about things that people cannot control.
The 2nd choice(clearing the burgers out of the city) seems best, also you can start testing of your product taking few samples from other places at random and declare it safe after that.
I don't think company could declare product safe from sample. Logically, the killer would only poison very small portion of product. Therefore, there would be so many false negative result.
Johnson and Johnson faced an entirely different dilemma than the Meatless Burger Reich. It faced a safety issue in one (albeit major) product for a brand that had a thousand or more other products on the shelves. Tylenol was lost for a while yes, but the demonstrated concern for customer safety helped with all the others. What else does the Meatless Burger Reich produce? Military-grade clinical biochemistry laboratories? No wait. That's Johnson and Johnson. It bought the business from Kodak back in 1990s.
One must also take into consideration the higher demand for Tylenol which allowed them to rebound after worldwide recall. Veggie Burgers may not have that same opportunity, tamper proof packaging is tougher to install and federal law likely ain't gonna bother with burgers! Personally I think country wide recall is the best option, economically and ethically.
Its interesting to think of this as an ethical dilemma, but an interesting way to look at it is that its a design issue, a flaw with the product. When you consider that J&J couldnt distribute their products safely to their customers, it makes more sense to pull all the compromised bottles from shelves.
Tylenol absolutely did the right thing. I remember a reluctance to buy Tylenol during and after that episode. After they brought out tamper-proof packaging and reintroduced their product, they created the marketing slogan "Trust Tylenol." Who knows how many people may have died from product tampering since then if they hadn't created the tamper-proof packaging we take for granted today?
As a result of the Tylenol poisoning, tamper-resistant packaging proved to be an effective long term solution in keeping and then gaining new customers. Furthermore, this new technology effectuated changes in tamper-proof product packaging across the board. Tylenol was considered a leader in this regard which boosted their brand and other company brands as well.
@@kalababraha9049 hey, meat is also good for your body it has a lot of protein that can increase your mucsle mass... And also did you know what a food chain is?
I think the third option was the best as seen in example. It encouraged stricter regulations, innovating packaging to prevent the problem occurring again, and brought back trust in the market, all for a short term hit in sales and costs. The problem with option 2 is that it doesn’t prevent the killer from travelling to other places to continue killing, since the packaging will always be vulnerable. Sales will take much longer to rebound as it’s hard to regain trust by only pulling the package from the city. Also, since the incident was covered in the news, it might encourage other dangerous individuals elsewhere to do the same thing, further damaging the brand. Option 2 is too risky, option 3 is a permanent and safer for all stakeholders.
@@qalbi-s_Ahnfy2095 So is it okay to slaughter humans for meat since we are omnivorous? (this is just a poor argument, being omnivorous doesn't mean you require meat to be healthy. Humans can be perfectly healthy without eating meat)
@@pascalbruenner How are you going to stop other omnivores and carnivores from we eating meat? Eat what Allah has allowed and avoid what is haram and harmful, like pork, alcohol etc. Peace. (Couldn't resist the temptation of associating religion with it, after seeing your name 😉)
If you decide to pull the burgers from stores, that would give incentive to keep poisoning the burgers. Since the criminal targeted your brand specifically, they're probably looking to damage your company. Deciding on options 2 or 3 shows the criminal that they can impact your brand, and could even encourage copycat criminals.
i would def go for option 2. It saves face with the customers in the effected area, ensures that the killer's primary location is safe from the poisoned products, and minimizes the damage done to the company, investors, and staff.
Step 1: Bribe the media to censor the news, to prevent people from knowing about this incident Step 2: recall the products from the city Step 3: test them for poison and destroy Then ask expert psychologists for their view on what would happen if the story was released, if our sales would increase or not. If yes, release the story. If not, keep an eye out for people that may try to release the story
As the CEO, I would take option 3. Followed by a MASSIVE paycut on my end, to avoid laying off as many people as possible. Should do the least ammount of damage to the brand.
I mean, this has happened before in my area and instead of pulling the product off the shelves, they did nothing. We customers just didn't buy the product anymore, until they caught the people doing it. It was around 2 years after that we started purchasing the product again.
If you pull the product then not only do you take the blame but you also prove to the murderer that he has power over an entire company and as an extend on every single person that works in it..
Middle ground; pull from city/state area. Reasoning; 1. The story from Johnson and Johnson, as a case study, showed that only the local area was affected. 2. Criminal is VERY unlikely to be travelling worldwide. Too much hassle and makes them MUCH easier to catch. 3. Strikes a balance between protecting the public, giving a good image (not many people will argue that pulling worldwide should be done, given the impact on the company), keeping shareholders and profits happy and laying off as few people as possible.
I started out with option B(citywide recall) but after some careful consideration, decided with Option A (not my problem) I realized that the methods in which to stop the murders are out of my hands, and to do anything about it would still look bad to the customers. On top of that, the killer could easily move his efforts into other burgers or other restaurants, and recalling our burgers is either what the killer wants, or it's his cue to move to less obvious places however, if there IS a way to find the poison via recalling, then the citywide approach makes perfect sense. (and hoping it catches ppl)
I'll probably choose the first option, do nothing about the products already out but trying to find solution for future products. As stated, the case had made a huge headline everywhere, which means potential customers had already aware of the risk when they bought my burger. I need to think about my employees wellfare too, pulling the burgers citywide would be my back up plan as the loss wouldn't be so big. But as someone who already experienced how difficult to get job and how job was needed to literally survive, I can't take a huge loss and cut off countless of employees, if I pulled the burgers worldwide.
I would think a local recall is the most appropriate response, based on tracing where the tampered products came from. Also, working with police to find out who might've been responsible, if possible.
It's perfectly possible that after you remove all burgers the killer just do the same with a different brand or product. Removing them won't necessarily mean safety for the customers.
I would act somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd option, Definitely pull city-wide as that’s a definite issue, but pull a sample (say, 100 burgers) from each store worldwide and test for poisoning. Then recall all stores that were found to have poison in their products. Don’t go full-tilt either way, but definitely show a tendency towards customer safety, then develop more products so that we have other items to fall back on so this doesn’t affect the company as much if it happens again.
Wherever I would feel comfortable going and buying the burgers at is how far I would recall them to. If I'm betting other people's lives on a that they are safe I should be willing to do the same.