Ethics

TUI UNIVERSITY

MICHAEL ANDERSON

BUSINESS- ETHICS 301

DR KENNETH CROMER

MODULE #1 – CASE

20 NOVEMBER 2010

Should the companies that dropped Tiger Woods during his scandal now reinstate him?

When examining this question two ethical considerations come to mind. First should you punish someone’s professional life based on actions in his personal life and second is it ethical to break a professional contract based on a person’s actions in their personal life. To me the answer to the first question is no, while the answer to the second question needs some examination.

According to the law he has committed no crime yet companies such as Gillette, Gatorade, Accenture, and AT&T quickly began dropping endorsement deals. The companies feared the bad publicity and the image consumers would now associate with Tiger Woods and his sex scandal. Today most endorsement contracts contain a moral clause that allows companies to terminate the contract without penalty in the event of an incident by the celebrity that the company feels greatly damages their reputatation.

Companies have hired Tiger because they believe his public image and persona will help them to sell their products. Tiger’s duty to the company is to maintain himself as a positive role model for this purpose. If Tiger has agreed to this type of relationship, anything he does that prevents his success as a marketing tool would be a violation of the contract. Logically if Tiger Woods was hired to endorse their product because of his public image and persona, and not because of his golfing status, his sponsors are justified in ending their professional relationship with him based on his personal actions.

But from a normative ethics standpoint you need to decide who might be hurt or helped by reinstating Tiger, the right and duties of everyone involved and the consequences of this decision. Let’s start with the companies. Some would say by ignoring allegations and credibility issues that...