Ethical Dilemma

Below is an example of a situation that represents ethical questions that confront businesses:

Your objective is to analyze the situation and discuss recommendations based on the areas to analyze below:

Think of yourself as an executive/manager/consultant for the company and be sure to consider both short and long range consequences. Also look at each situation from the perspective of all stakeholders (groups concerned: customers, stockholders, employees, government, and community).

Domino's Delivery

0ne night in March 1996 Bill Fobbs called Domino's and asked to have a pepperoni pizza delivered to his family. Domino's re-fused to deliver the pizza to his home and said he would have to come to the outlet to pick up his pizza. The Fobbs, who are black, live in a high-crime, predominantly black neighborhood in San Francisco, California. Mr. Fobbs's family complained that the refusal to deliver was an act of blatant racism, and according to his grandmother, "It can only be because we are black people." Wally Wilcox, the owner of the Domino's outlet, however, asserted that the issue was one of employee safety since several pizza-delivery people had been murdered while making deliveries, and pizza-delivery people were often robbed, assaulted, and killed. Domino's and most other large pizza chains-including Pizza Hut and Little Caesar's-use computerized systems that designate neighborhoods as green, yellow, or red. Customers in green neighborhoods get pizzas delivered to their door; in yellow neighborhoods customers must come out to the street and get their pizza from the delivery car; red neighborhoods arethose considered too dangerous for any home delivery at all, and customers in these areas must drive to the restaurant for their pizzas. Because red-marked neighborhoods are almost always minority neighborhoods, the American Civil Liberties Union criticized this pizza delivery practice as discriminatory. The California Restaurant Association asserted that the practice was part of the employer's legal and moral duty to eliminate workplace hazards.

Areas to analyze:

Analyze the situation considering the following:

1. In your view, is the Domino's delivery policy morally justified?
a. Consider:
i. a strictly legal viewpoint
ii. a moral and ethical viewpoint (personal and organizational),
iii. the point of view of what is best in the long run for the company,
iv. the impact on Domino's marketing programs
2. Could Domino's, Pizza Hut and Little Caesar's adopt a different kind of policy to protect their drivers? Should they? What policy would you recommend?
3. San Francisco subsequently passed a city law prohibiting the policy of refusing to deliver pizzas to some neighborhoods on the grounds that in practice the policy discriminates against minorities Do you agree?