Mktg 7028 - Case Analysis - the Hungry Professor

Shuzhe Zhang

MKTG7028

1/22/2015

Case Analysis-The hungry professor

1.        From my perspective, the reason why the professor’s action is ethical can be analyzed from the following aspects: Firstly, His action did not violate the law, I think whether or not an action violate the law is also the prerequisite to determine if the action is ethical, since obviously the legal constraints on people is more powerful than ethical constraints. If someone violate the law, he is definitely unethical. Secondly, What he did is uninjurious and didn’t infringe the hotel’s equity or caused any other negative consequences. Thirdly, The intention of the professor was harmless to the hotel or any other customers. Besides, the action was taken unconsciously, he was just hungry and I totally understand that.

2.        The professor’s behavior could be construed as unethical because of the following reasons: Firstly, Depending on certain duties, his behavior violated the duties of honest,  justice, and self-improvement. In a way the professor against the hotel rule, sometimes the same products been sold in different locations can have different prices, and we just have to accept it when this kind of situation occurs. He could have paid that cookies from the hotel instead of buying the same product of a cheaper price and replenishing it by himself. And this action did infringed the justification of other customers’ right to buy product of that hotel, it is unfair that someone pay less while other people pay more for the same product. Although it sounds like that self-improvement is none of other people’s concern, people should fulfill the duty for showing virtue, especially as a professor. Secondly, For proportionality framework, the means that he chose to solve the problem is unethical, people should be responsible for what means they employ for addressing problems, it is a criterion to judge people’s ethic. Thirdly, For social justice, people tend to judge a professor to be gracious and noble person, so I believe people may have a higher ethic standard for him, for example, if a poor man with less education took the same action as the professor did, I may be easier to forgive the poor and understand his behavior. So this is the Difference Principle that I assume to be.