Deck 7: Employee Responsibilities

Question 1

Which statement is not true of the agency concept?

A)In actual fact, not all agents are employees.
B)Under the common law tradition of the United States, all employees are treated as agents of employers.
C)The primary responsibilities in the employer-agent relationship lie with the employer.
D)The law has described the employee-employer connection as a master-servant relationship.

Answer 1

The primary responsibilities in the employer-agent relationship lie with the employer.

Question 2

Select the statement that does not support the narrow view of non managerial employees' responsibilities to their employer-the idea that the employer exercises a great deal of control over the nature and terms of employment with very little discretion given to the employee.

A)Employees consent to obeying managers when they take a job.
B)Employees who agree to obey employers are not truly abandoning their own responsibility.
C)The choice of obeying someone's command or jeopardizing one's job is a fundamentally coercive situation, and, therefore, the consent involved is not fully free.
D)Owners have property rights and have to be protected against the harms they might suffer from employees.

Answer 2

The choice of obeying someone's command or jeopardizing one's job is a fundamentally coercive situation, and, therefore, the consent involved is not fully free.

Question 3

Which of the following statements reflects a reason for business principals to invest in stock?

A)Investors are playing the stock for short-term gain.
B)Investors see their stock ownership as an investment in a company and its technology.
C)Investors see their stock ownership as a long-term investment for personal retirement and security.
D)All of the answers are correct.
E)None of the answers are correct.

Answer 3

All of the answers are correct.

Question 4

Which statement describes a managerial action that does not unethically impose costs upon stockholders and other stakeholders?

A)The action imposes unwanted costs on stockholders and stakeholder by giving up some alternatives in favor of others in the interest of maintaining the fiscal stability of the enterprise.
B)A personal interest of a manager hinders the exercise of his or her professional judgment.
C)A portion of some payment is kicked back to the payer as an incentive to make the payment in the first place.
D)Financial advisors receive payments from a brokerage house to pay for research and legal services that should be used to benefit the advisors' clients, not the advisors' personal interests.

Question 5

Select the statement that, ethically speaking, best represents a valid concept of what loyalty to a firm means.

A)Loyalty means a willingness to sacrifice one's own interest by going above and beyond ordinary employee responsibilities.
B)Loyal employees are expected to sacrifice for the firm even though the firm is not necessarily bound to sacrifice for the employee.
C)Since the model of agency law lays a legal duty of loyalty on employees, employees clearly have a corresponding ethical responsibility to be loyal.
D)While a willingness to sacrifice might be a part of loyalty, it would seem that devotion and faithfulness to a common good is both more essential to loyalty and what explains the willingness to sacrifice.

Question 6

Identify the statement that challenges Albert Carr's analogy that, like poker, business is a game that has its own rules and, therefore, is exempt from ordinary requirements of morality.

A)Carr overestimates the prevalence and acceptability of dishonesty within business.
B)Even if business did have its own set of ethical conventions, that fact alone does not exempt it from ordinary ethical evaluations.
C)There are major disanalogies between business and games like poker that weaken the conclusions drawn from Carr's analogy.
D)Unlike poker games, individual often have no choice but to participate in business practices.
E)All of the answers are correct.
F)None of the answers are correct.

Question 7

According to Richard DeGeorge, which statement presents a condition that makes blowing the whistle on a company not just permissible but obligatory?

A)A threat of serious harm exists.
B)The whistle-blower has exhausted all internal channels for resolving the problem.
C)The harm to be prevented overrides the harm done to the firm and to other employees.
D)The whistle-blower has good reason to believe that blowing the whistle will prevent the harm.

Question 8

Select the statement that is not a criticism of insider trading.

A)The insider benefits inappropriately by buying or selling the stock at a price below or above what the market will demand when the inside information is made public.
B)An insider can benefit by trading on bad news as well as good, and this might be an incentive to work against the firm's best interests.
C)The insider's action sends the correct message to the market, reflecting the stock's true value, moving the market toward equilibrium.
D)The insider's information is often used without the firm's permission in a way that harms the stockholder's interests.

Question 9

Which of the following statements is true of insider trading?

A)Insider trading holds back information from financial markets that moves stock prices closer to the point that reflects their true value.
B)Allowing insider trading deters the employees of a firm from working for the benefit the firm.
C)When an insider-trading stock transaction leads to one person's gain and another's loss, it amounts to fraud.
D)Insiders as well as outsiders can lay legitimate claims on gains from stock sales that take advantage of others.

Question 10

Which of the following statements accurately represents philosopher Ronald Duska's views on loyalty in business?

A)Employees have no responsibility of loyalty to their employees as the overriding goal of business is profit.
B)Loyalty is most relevant in situations in which both parties seek their own self-interest.
C)Employers are expected to sacrifice for employees, but seldom is an employee willing to sacrifice for his or her firm.
D)Employees who resign from their firm to take up a position at a competing organization should be deemed disloyal.

Question 11

An agent is a person who acts on behalf of another person, so all agents are, in effect, employees.

Question 12

The fact that employees take on special role-specific responsibilities within an economic system that benefits everyone is one reason offered for the claim that these responsibilities override other ethical considerations.

Question 13

One reason why a blanket obligation for all employees to obey their employers no matter what is unreasonable is that the choice of obeying someone's command or jeopardizing one's job is fundamentally coercive, and, thus, the consent involved is not fully free.

Question 14

Personal interests of managers that interfere with their responsibilities as managers constitute an unethical conflict for them.

Question 15

In Ronald Duska's view, the idea that a company is not expected to sacrifice on behalf of employees but that employees are expected to sacrifice on behalf of the company makes the company an appropriate object of loyalty.

Question 16

Unless and until a firm has demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice on behalf of employees, employees have little reason to demonstrate loyalty to the firm.

Question 17

While it is plausible that some dishonest acts, like bluffing a person in a business transaction, can have beneficial social consequences that do not threaten the stability of underlying social practices, it would be harder to claim that routine dishonesty would not erode the trust that does seem essential to social cooperation.

Question 18

According to Richard DeGeorge, even if a whistle-blower does not have documented evidence that will convince impartial observers of a firm's role in causing harm, he or she is nevertheless obligated to blow the whistle.

Question 19

Some observers argue that insider trading is an efficient means to disseminate accurate information about the market and that it moves the markets in the direction of equilibrium. The challenge to this argument is, however, that this is accomplished by unfair and unethical means.

Question 20

The Kantian tradition in principle-based ethics argues that dishonesty treats others as a means to our own ends and thus disrespects the dignity of other persons.

Question 21

Ensuring that markets function within the law, assume full information, and must be free from fraud and deception is an important internal function for market-based economic systems.