Journal: Ethics and Profit
The following Course Outcome is assessed in this Journal assignment:
GEL-7.02: Apply ethical reasoning to ethical issues within the field of study.
In your Unit 9 Seminar you will practice with some ethical approaches and apply them to business promotion. Now you will apply some of these same approaches to a payment scenario. Read the scenario and then respond to the checklist items.
Scenario:
Sam Trudeau managed a busy veterinary hospital. Two receptionists attended the front desk at all times. Their responsibilities were to answer phones, make appointments, and collect payments on services rendered, along with various other duties. Almost all payments into the hospital were in the form of cash, checks, and credit cards.
A receptionist called in sick, and Sam could not find any other employee who could work her shift, so Sam decided to cover the shift himself.
On the day he covered the sick receptionist’s shift, the phones seemed to be ringing nonstop, clients were backed up, and everything was chaotic. Mr. Ordine, a regular client, and his dog had just been seen by the veterinarian, and Mr. Ordine wanted to pay his bill in cash.
Sam knew Mr. Ordine’s dog received just one vaccine, and the price was $25.00, but no paperwork was done yet, so Sam took Mr. Ordine’s cash and said he would mail him the receipt when one was generated.
At the end of the day, the veterinarian still had not completed the paperwork, and Mr. Ordine’s file was in the stack to be refiled.
Apparently the veterinarian had forgotten to generate the paperwork, so there was $25 in the cash drawer that had no paper trail. Sam needed to run by the grocery store on his way home and was short cash, so he took the $25 out of the drawer, meaning to pay it back.
The next day, no one had noticed the $25 was missing, and Mr. Ordine’s file was refiled. Sam considered the pros and cons of putting the $25 back in the drawer and creating the paperwork for the service rendered.
Mr. Ordine was expecting a receipt to be mailed to him, but Sam knew he could easily generate a receipt without it going into the computer system, thus allowing him to just keep the $25.
After all, it was not that much money, and if he did the proper paperwork, he would just have to pay taxes on it anyway.
Respond to the checklist items below in a minimum of a 250-word response using APA format and citation style (include additional title and reference pages).
Checklist: View the presentation on ethics.
1. Explain what decision you would have made in Sam Trudeau’s place using the ethical decision-making steps.
2. Explain the ethical considerations using your ethical reasoning based on:
(a) Consequentialist approaches (choose one: ethical egoism, act utilitarianism, or rule utilitarianism) and
(b) Non-Consequentialist approaches (choose one: divine command or categorical imperative) or one of the Virtue Ethics viewpoints. (You should therefore present a total of two viewpoints concerning the scenario above.)
3. Explain the strength of one of your viewpoints chosen and the corresponding weakness with regard to this scenario and the decision made by Sam Trudeau.
4. Explain why and how the ethical decision to be made will impact the personnel at the hospital.
