Discussion 1 week 2 Crimes That Harm Business Versus Crimes Committed by Business
Which do you believe presents the greatest threat to civil society: a corporation that commits crimes (e.g., murder, environmental crimes, or bribery), or persons who commit crimes that harm businesses (e.g., embezzlement, fraud, or larceny)? Defend your response, using at least one example from current events.
Guided Response: Respond to at least two of your fellow students’ posts in a substantive manner. Some ways to do this include the following, though you may choose a different approach, providing your response is substantive:
Review the posts made by your peers. In response to your peers, first identify a non-traditional or creative way in which a corporation might be punished for committing a crime. Then discuss the consequences of implementing that punishment to the example used by your peer.
Respond to Meas Khlaing post
In general, any type of crime being committed will be considered a threat to civil society. In this case, crimes that harm business vs crimes committed by business I would go with the persons who commit crimes that harm businesses is the greatest threat to society today. Not only does this affects the people but the organization structure as well. This can affect the image/reputation of how the consumers do business with that particular organization. Society as a whole, we humans are judgmental creatures and depending on the crime it can affect a lot of things towards that business. However, this all depends on the crime that has been brought up and for society, stakeholder, law regulation to decided what the outcome of the case can be and depending on the case of the crime, paying a simple fine is one option to remedy the situation. For example, Well Fargo sandal with the fraud account being created. According to the NY Times (2018), “Wells Fargo was found by regulators to have systematically created fake customer accounts and misled customers and government officials.” This has caused a lot of problem any many people got away with the scandal and made lots of money from this scheme. Seaquist p. 86, describe fraud are likely to be committed at work and are in one of these six departments: accounting, operations, sales, executive/ upper management, customer service, or purchasing. In the end of this fraud scandal, Well Fargo was fined with a bill as a result of their illegal activities and faced many lawsuits altogether. This also led to the resignation of the CEO at Wells Fargo. Overall, the bank’s stable reputation was tarnished by this widespread fraud.
Flitter, E., Appelbaum, B. & Cowley, S. (2018). NY Times. Federal Reserve Shackles Wells Fargo After Fraud Scandal. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/business/wells-fargo-federal-reserve.html
Seaquist, G. (2012). Business law for managers [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/
Respond to Mitchell Powell post
When considering corporations and people that commit crimes, it is interesting to also consider which of them is more of a threat to civil society. Depending on the situation in question, there can be an argument made for both sides. I think that in the majority of cases, a corporation that commits a crime would likely be more dangerous. One of the main reasons why a business crime is more dangerous and threatening that a single person crime against a business is that a business operates at such a large scale that a lot more people have the potential of being affected. Businesses also have enough money to make a lot of things happen. For example, if they had something planned for the future that would end up harming the environment, they would have a lot more funds to work with to actually make a damaging difference. When a person on the individual level commits a crime against a company like embezzlement, usually the amount embezzled will stay in that one person’s hands. It also won’t be enough often times severely damage the company without the company noticing first in many cases. However, “all crimes are offenses against society, and convicted criminals are punished” (Seaquist, 2012). So whether the crime is at and individual level or at a corporate level, each will need to be evaluated and will receive the appropriate punishment.
An example that is fairly recent as a crime committed by a corporation would be what happened with Facebook. Facebook sold users’ personal information to third parties. In this instance, the personal information and data of billions of people was not protected and was put at risk. Even in comparison to some of the largest embezzlement schemes in history being in the millions of dollars, that amount is still a fairly small amount in comparison to how much the company profits each year. Both instances are not good and both should be avoided altogether but it seems as though corporate crime has the potential to be more threatening and damaging.
References
Seaquist, G. (2012). Business law for managers [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/
Discussion 2 week 2 Product Liability
After viewing the Chinese Imports & Food Safety (Links to an external site.) video, consider whether U.S. retailers that utilize products or raw ingredients that are imported from China and are poorly regulated should be liable in tort for injuries to consumers who are harmed by those products. Answer parts a and b of the prompt.
For this part of the prompt, answer one of the following points:
If U.S. companies should not be liable, then they could be legally exempt from tort liability. Discuss the consequences of such a policy to U.S. consumers.
If the U.S. companies should be liable, then those companies would not be legally exempt from tort liability. Discuss the consequences of such a policy to U.S. businesses.
Regardless of your response to part a, assume that U.S. retailers do have legal liability for defective products. What steps could U.S. retailers and manufacturers take when using products imported from China that would minimize their liability exposure? For example, they could warn consumers about the potential, though speculative, dangers when using products comprised of poorly regulated ingredients or components. Given your strategy, what challenges would exist for U.S. businesses that implemented your strategy?
Guided Response: Respond to at least two of your fellow students’ posts in a substantive manner. Some ways to do this include the following, though you may choose a different approach, providing your response is substantive:
Discuss the challenges that would exist if your employer (or a fictitious employer) were to adopt your classmate’s strategy.
Respond to Kathy Kim post
U.S. companies should be liable for the actions they take since they are selling products to consumers who are purchasing with the understanding that their products are safe. Strict liability would be applicable as the retailers would be liable for the products being unreasonably dangerous (Seaquist, 2012). In the instance of products from China, finished or raw products that are purchased by U.S. companies should be evaluated thoroughly and frequently to verify that they live up to the standards that the U.S. Company holds for themselves and their consumers. If not, they are responsible for the damages caused by their negligence.
The consequences of holding companies liable and not exempt from tort liability are the resources needed in order to keep products safe. For instance, there would be additional regulation and enforcement for companies to comply. That regulation may include additional inspections for imports or requiring inspections when exporting if an agreement to do so with the exporting country is in place. These are resources from a government perspective.
Another consequence is the increase in the price of products due to higher prices from other countries or from business resources used to inspect products. Businesses would need to find ways to cut costs elsewhere if they cannot use the cheaper products that come from China. Cutting costs elsewhere may lead to an impact on labor sources. It will cause a domino effect. Monetary resources are taken from another aspect of the business to make up for the loss in profits from buying products of quality.
U.S. companies can take additional steps to minimize liability. One option is having contracts with multiple sources rather than relying on one or a few to minimize the dependency. Another option is to develop high standards on product inspections and adhere to them. The first strategy would require resources to seek sources (suppliers) for finished or raw products and to continually review to confirm that there is a minimum number of suppliers in order to minimize dependency.
The second strategy of maintaining high standards on inspection of products would require resources (monetary and labor) for initial set up of high standards, sustaining the standards, and the frequency of inspections. Of all options, it requires monetary resources that businesses may or may not have in order to allocate towards these strategies.
Seaquist, G. (2012). Business law for managers [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/
Respond to Adreanna Reed post
If the U.S. companies should be liable, then those companies would not be legally exempt from tort liability. Discuss the consequences of such a policy to U.S. businesses.
It is the American organization’s obligation to ensure products that are being sent out from China are not hurtful to the American public. If the product is unsafe, at that point the organization would be liable to tort liability. Product liability permits “an offended party to sue under the speculations of guarantee, carelessness, and severe risk for wounds continued as the aftereffect of an product breakdown” (Seaquist, 2012, p. 132). As per Polinsky and Shavell (2010), the bad that could happen to United State organizations concerning this strategy will be the legal costs will expand, which can cause the expansion if costs of its products. Different things that could occur in an product liability claim are organizations decreasing working hours, making them close down plants and laying off their representatives.
Regardless of your response to part 1 of this question, assume that U.S. retailers do have legal liability for defective products. What steps could U.S. retailers and manufacturers take, when using products imported from China that would minimize their liability exposure? For example, they could warn consumers about the potential, though speculative, dangers when using products comprised of poorly regulated ingredients or components. Given your strategy, what challenges would exist for U.S. businesses that implemented your strategy?
There are a few stages the American organizations can take to limit liability exposure. One thing is they can take out liability protection and insurance. The test for this is the organizations would need to build their expenses. Second, the American organizations can test the products before carrying them to America. The test for this is more expenses for structures and individuals to achieve the testing and ensure the lawful activities and actions done by the producers and the Chinese government are survived. Something else is called Foreign Direct Investment where structures are worked in China to make the product to America’s nature of guidelines and ship them to America. The test for this is more expenses and “moves in the political atmosphere, monetary shakiness, cash devaluation, and market-explicit decreases” (Finch, (2012, p. 423).
Reference
Finch, J. (2012). Managerial Marketing. San Diego, CA: Bridgeport Education, Inc.
Polinsky, M., & Shavell, S. (2010). The Uneasy Case for Product Liability. The Harvard Law Review, 2010. Vol. 123:1437. Retrieved from http://www.harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/polinsky_shavell.pdf (Links to an external site.)
Seaquist, G. (2012). Business law for managers. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc
