Business Ethics and Government Contracts: National Semiconductor
Ethics in Business from a business perspective, working under government contracts can be a very lucrative proposition. A stream of orders keep coming in, revenue increases and the company grows. The obvious downfalls to working in this manner is both higher quality expected as well as the extensive research and documentation required for government contracts. If a part fails to perform correctly it can cause minor glitches as well as problems that can carry serious repercussions, such as in the National Semiconductor case. In this paper the reader with become knowledgeable about the practices of National Semiconductor and the importance of ethical practices in business.
When both the culpable component and company are found, the question arises of how extensive these repercussions should be. Is the company as an entity liable. Should we look into individual employees within that company? From an ethical perspective one would have to look at the mitigating factors of both the employees and their superiors along with the role of others in the failure of these components. Next you would have to analyze the final ruling from a corporate perspective and then we must examine the macro issue of corporate responsibility in order to attempt to find a resolution for cases like these.
The first mitigating factor involved in the National Semiconductor case is the uncertainty, on the part of the employees, on the duties that they were assigned. It is plausible that during the testing procedure, an employee couldn't distinguish which parts they were to test under government standards and commercial standards. In some cases they might have even been misinformed on the final consumers of the products that ...