Kelli is the owner of a retail gift shop in Ocean City, Maryland, and regularly orders items for her shop in bulk from various suppliers of novelty items. Kelli contacts one of the suppliers, Made In
C CBC Legal Studies – Business Law IA n OER Textbook for MNGT 140
A. Ends v . Means
A Foundational Question
In business ethics, do the means justify the ends , or do the ends justify the means? Is it beer to hav e a set
of rules telling you what you ought to do in any particular situation and then let the chips fall where they
may, or should you worry more about how things are going to end up and do whatev er’s necessary to
reach that goal?
U ntil recently, Eddy Lepp ran an organic medicine business in Northern California. His herbal product
soothed nausea and remedied vomiting, especially as suffered by chemo patients. He had a problem,
though. While his business had been OK’ d by California regulators, federal agencies hadn’t approv ed: on
the national level, selling his drug w as breaking the law. On the other hand, not selling his remedy had a
significant downside: it w as consigning his clients to debilitating suffering. So when federal agents came
knocking on his door, he had to make a decision.
If the means justify the ends—if you should follow the rules no maer the consequences—then when the
agents ask Lepp point blank whether he’s selling the medicine, the ethical action is to admit it. He should
tell the truth even though that will mean the end of his business. On the other hand, if the ends justify the
means—if your ethical interest focuses on the consequences of an act instead of what you actually do—
then the ethics change. If there’s a law forcing people to suffer unnecessarily, it should be broken. And
when the agents ask him whether he’s selling, he’s going to hav e an ethical reason to lie.
A cross the entire field of traditional ethics, this is a foundational distinction. Is it what you do that
maers, or the consequences? It’s hard to get oriented in ethics without making a preliminary decision
between these two. No one can make the decision for you, but before anyone can make it, an
understanding of how each works should be reached.
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Aribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (hps://creativ ecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) .
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