Reference no: EM131810069
Assignment: Accounting Ethics
Chapter 4- Virtue, Justice, and Social Responsibility
1. A company has a diverse workforce that principally is comprised of African Americans and Asian Americans. According to actuarial statistics, its African-American employees will live 7 years' postretirement, and its Asian-American employees will live 12 years' postretirement. All employees receive $10,000 per year as pension benefits. At an applicable discount rate determined by company actuaries, the present value factor for a 7-year annuity is 5.60, and the and the present value factor for a 12-year annuity is 8.40.
a. If the company wants to give the same pension benefits to its African-American employees that it gives to its Asian-American employees in economic value, what amount of annual pension benefit should the company pay to its African-American employees?
b. Do you see any difficulties in administering such a plan?
c. Does Aristotle's philosophy of distributive justice require the company to make this adjustment to annual pension benefits?
2. In your role as an internal auditor for a car manufacturer, you discovered that your employer can produce a car engine that will get 8 more miles per gallon than the existing engine. However, the cost of producing this car engine would be an additional $3,000 per car. Assume that a typical driver drives a car for 5 years and 200,000 miles. Also, assume that the cost of a gallon of gas is $5 per gallon and a typical car gets 24 miles per gallon. The company is wondering if it is ethical to not produce this more efficient engine.
a. Is this an ethical question or just a simple cost accounting problem?
b. How would you analyze this from the perspective of shareholder theory?
c. How would you analyze this from the perspective of stakeholder theory?
d. If this car manufacturer does decide to produce the more fuel-efficient car, would you consider it to be an act of corporate social responsibility?
e. Would your answer to the preceding question be different if the car manufacturer's motivation was simply to increase its profits by selling more cars?