For the case study presented below, apply the ethical decision-making paradigm p
ID: 371062 • Letter: F
Question
For the case study presented below, apply the ethical decision-making paradigm presented in Section 11.5 to analyze the situation. Present potential courses of ac- tion and provide a discussion of them SCSI, an industry standard system for connecting devices (like disks) to computers, provides a vendor ID protocol by which the computer can identify the supplier (and model) of every attached disk. Company C makes file servers consisting of a processor and disks. Disks sold by C identify C in their vendor ID. Disks from other manufacturers can be connected to C's file servers; however, the file server software performs certain maintenance functions, notably prefailure warnings based on performance monitoring, only on C-supplied disks Company P decides to compete with C by supplying cheaper disks for C's file server. They quickly discover that while their disks work on C's file servers, their disks lack a prefailure waning feature that C's disks have. Therefore, the CEO of P directs you, the engineer in charge of the disk product, to find a solution to the problem of no prefailure warning for your disks. Using reverse engineering, you discover that by changing the vendor ID of P's disks, the C file servers will treat P disks as C disks. Your management at company P instructs you to incorporate this change into your product so that you can advertise the disks as "100% C-compatible." What would you do in this situation?Explanation / Answer
Let's try and understand why Reverse engineering is being used here by the manager? It is to investigate a C's product and learn about it so that P can design and market a superior product.
If I were there in this situation, I would talk to a number of stakeholders. I assume there are strict rules about this type of business. P justifying its actions based upon anti-trust does not hold water because if they felt that way they should have taken it up with the justice department first. I think the crux of the legal issue is whether a "vendor id" is proprietary.
Another assumption made here is : P has an ethics office and a legal department. In addition to consulting them, I would also talk to my manager and colleagues. As per my understanding, all managers at all levels are subject to the strict ethics policy. CEO or no CEO, unethical behavior is not tolerated
Company P is representing itself as Company C to the computer system performing maintenance. If problems were to develop with the Company P drive, it would be probable that the Computer System Support at the Customer Company would telephone the Company C for help or make a complaint. In many cases the drives are not visible to the user, so if the computer tells the user the drive is from Company C then the user will believe it. In my opinion, Company P is representing itself as Company C -- that is clearly unethical.
This problem is explicitly defined as unacceptable as per my knowledge have not happened here without severe consequences. Thus I would follow the ethical policy since in the long term it serves the both company's and the customers' best interest.