What impact has information services and the Internet had on consumers and
businesses?
a. They have shifted the balance of power between consumers and businesses because
consumers are able to compare prices, read independent rankings, and obtain greater
product knowledge.
b. The Internet and other information services have not had a substantial impact on
consumers and businesses.
c. The balance of power between consumers and business has remained the same
because businesses have obtained greater access to information about their competitors.
d. Greater information services and the Internet have shifted power back to businesses
since they can now obtain more information about their customers.
e. Laws and regulations represent the influence businesses have on consumers and vice
versa—whether or not information is more readily available does not impact the laws
governing consumers’ rights.
Who are the principals and agents of a corporation?
a. Employees and stockholders, respectively
b. Managers and employees, respectively
c. Owners and executives, respectively
d. Stockholders and employees, respectively
e. Customers and managers, respectively
How can a company align the interests of owners with managers through executive
compensation?
a. By significantly reducing executive pay across the board
b. By linking compensation to company performance and achievement of goals
c. By setting executive compensation at a level equal to the industry average
d. By capping executive compensation at ten times that of the lowest paid employee
e. By basing salaries on seniority with the company in order to increase longevity
Society’s primary method of enforcing its requirements regarding business behavior is
through
a. the legal system.
b. boycotts and demonstrations.
c. the media.
d. buying foreign-made products.
e. self-regulation.
Which of the following is least likely to be a use of internal controls in an organization?
a. Ensuring compliance with laws
b. Safeguarding corporate assets and resources
c. Measuring the effects of advertising on sales
d. Allowing comparisons between actual and planned performance
e. Protecting the reliability of organizational information
Which of the following is not one of the elements of Texas Instruments’ Ethics Quick
Test?
a. Is the action legal?
b. Does it comply with our values?
c. If you do it, will you feel bad?
d. How will it look in the newspapers?
e. What will your coworkers think?
A technology assessment will help a firm do all of the following except
a. allow managers to estimate whether the benefits of adopting a specific technology
outweigh the costs to the firm and to society.
b. help companies ensure compliance with government regulations related to
technology.
c. assist managers in evaluating their firm’s performance and to chart strategic courses
of action to respond to new technologies.
d. help the organization understand social and ethical issues relating to technology and
develop appropriate and responsible responses to them.
e. meet all of the stakeholders’ needs and desires concerning the technology used by the
firm.
To generate a measurement of the costs of regulation, economists generally classify
regulations as
a. safety-related or environment-related.
b. ethical or legal.
c. standardized or industry-specific.
d. state or national.
e. economic or social.
In order for any social responsibility initiative to have strategic significance in a
company, it must be fully supported and valued by
a. top management.
b. legislators who develop federal law and policy.
c. government officials in the local area.
d. the company’s stockholders.
e. non-profit groups who benefit from a company’s philanthropic spending.
In response to the collapse of the U.S. financial system in late 2008, the federal
government has become involved in corporate governance to a degree not seen since
a. the Great Depression.
b. the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
c. the late 1800s and early 1900s.
d. the New York Stock Exchange reforms.
e. the mid 1950s.
The flatter organizational hierarchies brought about due to the economic instability of
the 1980s and early 1990s caused all of the following except
a. workforce reduction.
b. increasing empowerment of lower level employees.
c. more opportunities for outstanding employees to move into management.
d. restructuring of the firm to focus on core competencies.
e. focus on efficiency and economies of scale.
To which of the following forms of business can the concept of social responsibility be
applied?
a. Large, public corporations
b. Small, privately held corporations
c. All forms of corporations
d. Any form of business, from a sole proprietorship to a large corporation
e. All businesses except those with less than 50 employees
What is the current trend concerning monitoring employee communications in the
workplace?
a. Few companies are monitoring unacceptable uses of technology by their employees
because these abuses are nearly impossible to detect.
b. Many companies are now monitoring employee communications including phone
calls, e-mails, and Internet usage.
c. The courts have ruled that monitoring employee communications, such as phone calls
and e-mails, is unconstitutional.
d. Fewer companies are monitoring employee communications because its sends a
message of a lack of trust.
e. Companies are cutting back on the number of employees having access to computers
in order to limit abuses of the Internet and e-mail.
Which of the following is not one of the goals that companies should strive for in
working to protect and preserve the environment?
a. Companies should rethink the concept of a product.
b. Businesses should seek ways to make their commitment to the environment
profitable.
c. Companies should minimize the costs of complying with laws by taking shortcuts.
d. Companies should strive to eliminate the concept of waste.
e. The price of products should reflect their true costs.
When a company is denying responsibility and doing less than is required with a
particular stakeholder, it is engaged in a(n) ____ strategy.
a. accommodative
b. defensive
c. reactive
d. inactive
e. proactive
Issues related to fairness and honesty may arise because business is sometimes regarded
as a
a. contest, with the most profitable firm “winning.”
b. contest, with the most ethical firm “winning.”
c. war, requiring surprise attacks, guerrilla warfare, and other warlike tactics to win the
battle for consumers’ dollars.
d. game governed by its own rules, rather than those of society.
e. game governed by the rules of society.
Companies with less than 100 employees account for about ____ percent of total
employment in the United States.
a. 40
b. 50
c. 60
d. 70
e. 10
____ prohibit(s) employment discrimination on the basis of race, national origin, color,
religion and gender.
a. The International Employment Rights Treaty
b. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
c. The Americans with Disabilities Act
d. Affirmative Action programs
e. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
What is the Kyoto Protocol?
a. Specific international standards that every nation must comply with in regards to
emission of gases
b. Standards that every nation must comply with in regards to the emission of pollutants
into streams and drinking water supplies
c. A controversial treaty proposed among industrialized nations to slow global warming
d. A United States law that regulates the emission of harmful gases into the atmosphere
without a permit
e. An alliance of scientists worldwide working to prove the harmful effects certain gases
can have on the environment
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted to
a. extend the provisions of the Clayton Act.
b. restore stakeholder confidence and provide a new standard of ethical behavior for
business.
c. determine the scope of punishments for executives at Enron and WorldCom.
d. eliminate the need for the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations.
e. reduce most white-collar crime to misdemeanors.
Which of the following is one of the arguments for banning human cloning?
a. Cloning has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of diseases and create
replacement organs.
b. Cloning is unethical because it involves humans meddling with nature.
c. When cloning is used to treat a patient, an actual human must be destroyed.
d. Human cloning does not have the potential to enhance human life in any way and
therefore is not worth the money it costs.
e. Banning human cloning could threaten important research, especially in the areas of
infertility and cancer treatment.
When the maker of Doan’s pills made unproven claims that its product is more effective
than other pain relievers at alleviating back pain, it engaged in
a. mergers and acquisitions.
b. price discrimination.
c. tying agreements.
d. exclusive agreements.
e. an unfair method of competition.
Organizational crises are characterized by all of the following except
a. a threat to a company’s high-priority goals.
b. routine problems occurring in business.
c. being a surprise to a company’s membership.
d. the need for swift action.
e. far-reaching events.
Which of the following is not likely to be an effect of workforce reduction?
a. Employee compensation usually increases when fewer employees are working for a
company.
b. Job satisfaction and loyalty often decrease after a company experiences a workforce
reduction.
c. Former employees may begin receiving unemployment benefits.
d. Remaining employees begin to take on more responsibilities and workload.
e. Remaining employees are anxious about job security after they survive a round of
layoffs.
In what decade did environmental concerns start to become a focus of governments
around the globe in the form of environmental protection laws?
a. 1910s
b. 1930s
c. 1950s
d. 1970s
e. 1990s
The implementation of an ethics program
a. is primarily directed at training top managers and developing compensation plans that
will insure top managers are ethical.
b. translates a plan of action into operational terms and establishes a means by which
organizational ethical performance will be monitored, controlled, and improved.
c. starts with training and ends with the development of a code of conduct.
d. will not be successful unless the chief executive officer (CEO) is using a
transactional leadership approach.
e. will be the same from organization to organization, as there is little need to tailor any
aspect of the program.
Conflicts of interest exist when employees must choose whether to
a. advance their own interests, those of the organization, or those of some other group.
b. advance the interests of the organization or those of society.
c. accept bribes.
d. carry out an assignment they perceive as unethical.
e. report an unethical coworker.
What asset resides in relationships, and is characterized by mutual goals and trust, and
smoothes internal and external transactions and processes?
a. Financial capital
b. Intellectual capital
c. Interpersonal capital
d. Social capital
e. Relationship capital
Because cultural differences introduce new complexities to the process of ethical
decision-making, companies’ attitudes toward training rubrics are best described by
which of the following statements?
a. Training rubrics become less and less useful as the work environment becomes more
global.
b. Training rubrics must be lengthy in order to apply directly to any situation that may
arise.
c. Training rubrics are pivotal to an employee’s ability to assess an ethical issue and
respond appropriately.
d. Training rubrics are helpful but not as important as an employee’s common sense.
e. Training rubrics increase the likelihood an employee will respond inappropriately.
____ involves the sharing of business information, maintaining business relationships,
and conducting business transactions by means of telecommunications networks.
a. Internet marketing
b. Internet data interchange
c. E-commerce
d. Web-based relational approach
e. Commerce online
What is another name for a genetically modified crop?
a. Transgenic crop
b. Altered crop
c. High-yield crop
d. FlavSavr
e. Improved crop
What is the promotion of environmentally friendly products called?
a. Earth Day
b. Green marketing
c. Earth-friendly initiatives
d. Planet protection
e. Enviro-promotion
The Pet Food Institute, the Tobacco Institute, and the American Booksellers Association
are all examples of
a. umbrella organizations.
b. trade associations.
c. special-interest groups.
d. PACs.
e. trade unions.
In the “bad apple-bad barrel” analogy,
a. no one has the right to label some conduct as unethical.
b. “bad apples” refer to an unethical corporate culture.
c. the code of conduct is used to solve all ethical dilemmas faced in the workplace.
d. “bad apples” are people who will always do things in their own self-interest
regardless of organizational standards of conduct.
e. a code of conduct is not taken seriously as a key component of an ethics program.
Identify and discuss the goals and strategies of the four types of partnerships for
development.
Answer:
Answers will vary.
Name five stakeholder issues and how these could be measured to assess corporate
impact and success.
Answer:
Answers will vary.
What is workplace diversity, and why might a firm embrace diversity?
Answer:
Answers will vary.
Imagine you have just taken a job as CEO of a firm with a recent history of ethical
transgressions. What steps would you take to begin changing the ethical culture of the
organization?
Answer:
Answers will vary.
How has consumerism affected public policy over the past four decades?
Answer:
Answers will vary.
What role does cultural intelligence play in a company’s success in managing
stakeholder issues in a global environment?
Answer:
Answers will vary.
How should a company address stakeholder concerns about environmental issues?
Answer:
Answers will vary.
How can the traditional approach to corporate philanthropy be described?
Answer:
Answers will vary.
What is an ethical issue? Describe four categories of ethical issues and provide
examples of specific situations that may occur within each category.
Answer:
Answers will vary.
How can an employee hotline be used to advance a company’s ethics policies?
Answer:
Answers will vary.
What are the four major parts of the social responsibility model? Describe each element
and how these elements work together in the model.
Answer:
Answers will vary.
What are the four types of corporate social responsibility? Provide a brief explanation
of each type, including an example of how a business may fulfill each responsibility.
Answer:
Answers will vary.
What are the three types of workplace violence?
Answer:
Answers will vary.
Trace the recent history of social responsibility in the United States, including key
events and trends that led to current expectations of business.
Answer:
Answers will vary.
Describe each group in the 10-40-40-10 model of Variation in Employee Conduct. What
does the model indicate about managing the ethical culture of an organization?
Answer:
Answers will vary.