Question 5:
Apparently no relatives of any of the victims sued Johnson & Johnson. Would they have had a moral case if they had? Should the company have forseen a risk and done something about it?
Response:
This was not the first case of such harmful tampering. In New York in 1899, Harry Cornish, the owner of knickerbocker athletic club, was sent a package that contained Bromo-Seltzer (an antacid) before the holidays. He thought it was a silly joke teasing and warning not to drink too much over the holidays. He took the bottle home and thought nothing of it until a relative consumed some and complained of feeling ill the next day. Cornish tried some of the antacid and admitted to it tasting off as well. Turns out the contents had been poisoned. Cornish survived a minor illness following the tasting but sadly, his relative passed.This was a very long trial and likely very public because the appeal process was a landmark in US law which determined previous crimes cannot be used as evidence for unrelated ones (Schwartz 2012).Since other medical products had been tampered before the time of this Tylenol incident, there should have been more awareness of the potential risks to insufficient packaging. The research and development of their value chain should have been a priority before any major incident prompted it.
The families would have had a moral case because there should be more preventative measures to protect the public from situations like this. The investigators found that many bottles were either purchased or stolen from a few different locations to be tampered with and eventually returned to the shelves. This should not have been so easy to accomplish by the individual responsible for the poisoning.
Question 6:
How well do you think a general credo works in guiding action? Would you prefer a typical mission statement or a clear set of policy outlines, for example? Do you see any way in which the Johnson & Johnson Credo could be improved or modified?
Response:
Defining your beliefs and guiding principles is important to running a successful business. If you don't define your beliefs, others--be it friends, associates or the marketplace--will do it for you. (Sugars, 2010) I think that a general credo works really well in guiding action. A credo covers much more than simply where the company is going and why they are there, it covers the values of the company. The credo forces the company to keep the needs of the customer first. In my opinion, the credo works better than a mission statement or a clear set of policy outlines because it covers and defines so much more: companies would have to write out millions of policies in order to prepare for future conflicts and a mission statement doesn’t even begin to cover how to deal with such a crisis. No, I don’t think that Johnson & Johnson needs to improve the credo because it covers all the important categories of people affected: customers, employees, the community and stockholders.
Apparently no relatives of any of the victims sued Johnson & Johnson. Would they have had a moral case if they had? Should the company have forseen a risk and done something about it?
Response:
This was not the first case of such harmful tampering. In New York in 1899, Harry Cornish, the owner of knickerbocker athletic club, was sent a package that contained Bromo-Seltzer (an antacid) before the holidays. He thought it was a silly joke teasing and warning not to drink too much over the holidays. He took the bottle home and thought nothing of it until a relative consumed some and complained of feeling ill the next day. Cornish tried some of the antacid and admitted to it tasting off as well. Turns out the contents had been poisoned. Cornish survived a minor illness following the tasting but sadly, his relative passed.This was a very long trial and likely very public because the appeal process was a landmark in US law which determined previous crimes cannot be used as evidence for unrelated ones (Schwartz 2012).Since other medical products had been tampered before the time of this Tylenol incident, there should have been more awareness of the potential risks to insufficient packaging. The research and development of their value chain should have been a priority before any major incident prompted it.
The families would have had a moral case because there should be more preventative measures to protect the public from situations like this. The investigators found that many bottles were either purchased or stolen from a few different locations to be tampered with and eventually returned to the shelves. This should not have been so easy to accomplish by the individual responsible for the poisoning.
Question 6:
How well do you think a general credo works in guiding action? Would you prefer a typical mission statement or a clear set of policy outlines, for example? Do you see any way in which the Johnson & Johnson Credo could be improved or modified?
Response:
Defining your beliefs and guiding principles is important to running a successful business. If you don't define your beliefs, others--be it friends, associates or the marketplace--will do it for you. (Sugars, 2010) I think that a general credo works really well in guiding action. A credo covers much more than simply where the company is going and why they are there, it covers the values of the company. The credo forces the company to keep the needs of the customer first. In my opinion, the credo works better than a mission statement or a clear set of policy outlines because it covers and defines so much more: companies would have to write out millions of policies in order to prepare for future conflicts and a mission statement doesn’t even begin to cover how to deal with such a crisis. No, I don’t think that Johnson & Johnson needs to improve the credo because it covers all the important categories of people affected: customers, employees, the community and stockholders.