Ethical Issues In Game Simulation

Game Simulation that helps to have a view on new threats and opportunities. Many companies lack of unethical acts and behaviors, which results in the loss of stakeholders shares. Rethinking a company's purpose in terms of societal needs can help to differentiate from competition, promote public trust, and increase stakeholder value. A company needs to have their mind set to do "good", not just to do "well". This leads to the decision, which the simulation experience changes the existing shelved products that contain the harmful substance in protecting the company of any legal lawsuits.

Values and morals are the existence of everybody's daily life. At the extent of services to others our values are tested daily based on the circumstances. This
process is similar to the ethical decisions that had to be made in the simulation concerning the current products containing the contaminant. The company quotes, "the advantages over our competition are to be obtained through superior performance, never through unethical or illegal business practices. Acquiring proprietary information from others through improper means, possessing trade secret information that was obtained without the owner's consent or inducing disclosure of confidential information from past or present employees of other companies will be prohibited, even if motivated by the best intentions to advance the interests of the company." The problem was that the company seemed to be risking their reputation. So the decision to disseminate information broadly about increased risk for specific groups. Offer to replace tainted product or to refund purchase price seemed to be the best for me.

Furthermore, whenever legal problems arise, like the FDA standards are changing, a company needs to make an ethical and legal decision.
There are different points to look at in such a situation. First, the products in the own country needs to be set to the new standards, and the old products need to be recalled or canceled. Consumers have to be informed and the company needs to know about legal rights. Also, researching the other countries standards and ethics is important because selling the products in a different culture needs to be done correct. If there are unethical choices made, the reputation of the company will be decreased in the foreign country as at home. So the best decision for this problem was to honor other countries' rights to set safety standards for their own citizens. Sell product where foreign regulations
permit.

In addition, values are like rules on how we make decisions about right and wrong, what we should and should not do, and what is good and bad.
Also, what is more important whenever having two options are defined by values. This would fit to the first case of the simulation best. I had to make the decision what is good or bad considering the problem of contaminant. Morals are seen more in a social aspect, and tend to have a broad acceptance. People judge others more on their morals than their values. This would fit to the second case, which I had to find which option would make others happy. Whatever I choose there, they would have thought of me either as moral or immoral. "Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach which emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that which emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism)."(Hinman,
2007).

Comparing this simulation to my workplace, I find much equality. Since I own a company as well, I know what it means to make decisions and how many people are involved in my decisions. The difference is that the company in the simulation is bigger and there are more people involved, which make the decision process more complex. Including myself I have three managers, one employee, and my customers to consider whenever I make decisions. This is sometimes a challenge to make everybody happy and consider others ethical aspects. So the simulation was useful to see how hard it is to consider many others and what all needs to be considered.

Furthermore, considering external influences it was hard to make easy decisions sometimes. In the first scenario the main outside influences were the customer's health and the reputation. Since there was an issue that could have created severe health problems the social pressure from the customers was a big issue. In the second scenario the law and regulations were the outside influence. Would the company just ignore the new FDA standards or did not research the foreign country's ethics; it could have caused many problems. So those social pressures are always a main point with a company that wants good reputation.

In the end, I thought that the EthicsGame Simulation was a useful tool, which helped me to see and identify concepts better. Learning how much is behind making a single decision is important whenever it comes to decision-making, either in a company or even in private. Thinking about other people is morally correct, no matter what decision is to make. The Simulation showed exactly how important it is to consider others and to put myself into their shoes, in order to make the best choice.

Reference PageHinman L., 2007, Virtue Ethics. Reviewed on January 18th, 2010 from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/.