Business Ethics

1 Which environmental issue might fit easily within standard ethical theory and can easily be integrated into the standard model of business' ethical responsibilities?

A) Responsibilities to generations of human beings not yet living.

B) The moral standing of nonhuman living beings.

C) Anthropocentrical ethics allowing for responsibilities regarding the nonhuman natural world.

D) Nonanthropocentrical ethics claiming that we have direct moral responsibilities to The nonhuman natural world.

2 According to the anthropocentric, nonanthropocentric, and various biocentric approaches to environmental issues, which beings would not be holders of ethical value?

A) Individual humans.

B) Whole ecosystems, populations, and species.

C) Individual animals.

D) Individual living beings other than animals

3 Identify the activity that ecocentric ethics would not accept as morally legitimate:

A) Using animals as food, pets, or game.

B) Clear-cut forestry, hunting and fishing that threaten endangered species.

C) Selective thinning of forests lands by logging

D) Selective hunting and killing as a means to protect ecosystems from invasion by nonnative species.

4 Select the statements that do not express a good reason for preserving biological diversity among both plant and animal species:

A) Lost diversity among crops makes food production more prone to disease and weather- related failures.

B) Plant diversity holds great promise for research into medicine production.

C) Plant diversity holds great promise for research into food production.

D) Biodiversity contributes to healthier ecosystems.

E) All of the above.

F) None of the above.

5 Select the statement challenging the view that from a strictly free market perspective, resources are "infinite":

A) Human ingenuity and incentive has always found substitutes for any shortages.

B) As the supply of any resource decreases, the price increases and provides a strong incentive to supply more or provide a less costly substitute.

C) All resources are fungible, i.e., can be replaced by substitutes.

D) Trading certain environmental goods like rhinoceros horns, tiger claws, elephant tusks, and mahogany on the black market seriously threatens their viability.

6 Identify the perspective that, if true, would challenge Mark Sagoff's argument against the use of economic analysis as the dominant tool of environmental policymakers:

A) Economics can only deal with wants and preferences because these are what get expressed in an economic market.

B) Even though wants and beliefs are in different categories, markets can measure the intensity of our wants by our willingness to pay, and that fact, by extension, provides a measurement as well for our beliefs or values.

C) When economics is involved in environmental policy, it treats beliefs as if they are mere wants and thereby seriously distorts the issues.

D) Wants are personal and subjective, while beliefs are subject to rational evaluation. When environmentalists argue for preservation of a forest, or species, or ecology, they are stating convictions about a public good that can be accepted or rejected by others on the basis of reasons, not on who is most willing to pay for it.

7 Market analysis as applied to issues of the environment is ineffective because:

A) It treats us always as consumers, not as citizens, threatening our political process. It leaves no room for debate, discussion, or dialogue in which to defend our beliefs with reasons.

B) The market ignores the fact that we are "thinkers," not just "wanters," and reduces our beliefs and values to mere matters of personal taste and opinion.

C) As Mark Sagoff points out, environmental goals are views and beliefs that cannot be priced by markets or economic analysis.

D) Our political system leaves room for both personal and public interests.

E) All of the above:

F) None of the above:

8 Select the statement that does not challenge the Mark Sagoff-Norman Bowie approach which holds that absent consumer demand or law that establish environmental policy, business has no particular environmental responsibility:

A) This approach underestimates the influence that business can have in establishing the law.

B) The side constraints of law are a highly effective tool for controlling managerial decisions that might affect the environment.

C) Norman Bowie's proposed obligations on the part of business to refrain from using its influence to shape environmental regulation is a praiseworthy proposal but it's unlikely to have any political effect.

D) This approach underestimates the ability of business to influence consumer choice.

9 Choose the statement that defenders of the circular flow model which explains the nature of economic transactions in terms of a flow of resources from businesses to households would agree with:

A) The services that resources yield can be provided in many ways by substituting different factors of production and are, therefore, infinite.

B) The possibility that the economy can grow indefinitely to keep up with significant population growth is ignored by this model.

C) If resources are moved through the classical model of a productive system at a rate that outpaces the productive capacity of the earth or the earth's capacity to absorb wastes and by-products of the system, the entire classical model will prove unstable.

D) Many resources like clean air, drinkable water, fertile soil, and food cannot, under the circular flow model, be replaced by the remaining factors of production.

10 Identify the statement that does not meet Natural Capitalism's principles for the redesign of business to meet its environmental responsibilities:

A) To serve the needs of the poorest 75 percent of the world's population, ecoefficient business practices focus on ways of increasing efficiency and, therefore, decreasing resource use by a factor of 5-10.

B) To serve the needs of the poorest 75 percent of the world's population, the standard growth model would increase economic growth by a factor of 5-10.

C) The principle of biomimicry attempts to eliminate by-products once lost as waste and pollution and reintegrate them into the production process or return them as a benign or beneficial product to the biosphere.

D) Models of business as a producer of goods should be replaced with a model of business as a provider of services.