Week 7 Tutorial

Principles of Responsible Commerce

Tutorial Preparation

1. What responsibilities should governments have when they examine and then accept tenders for goods and services?

When the Australian government examined and accepted the tenders, their responsibilities were towards the citizens. Australia has been adopting the democratic system since the 1850s (Weller, 2004) so their responsibility should have been towards the citizens. The Australian government should uphold the priority of the citizens over foreign nationals (Knight, 2012). Local businesses and employees should be given preferences over the European Union (EU) companies. The government should impose non-tariff barriers to defend local businesses from foreign competitors (Cuyvers & Dumont, 2004).

Word Count: 82

2. Is a shared tender the ethical position to take?

The question of whether the action of shared tender is ethical depends may vary according to different views. In the view of a utilitarian, the long-term consequences of an action must be taken into account (Mulgan, 2007); the citizens of Australia suffered as they couldn’t compete, therefore it is not ethical. Besides that, a follower of ethics of care would view that the government owes the citizens a duty as they have a special relationship – democracy, where the government failed to execute by not giving the locals preferences over other nationals, therefore it is not ethical (Knight, 2012). In Kantianism, the government should never use citizens as a mean, which sequentially already is unethical.

Word Count: 114

3. Was it ethical of the local distributor of the EU company to quote price differences in their advertising brochure?

The act of the local distributor of the EU company to compare the features and prices of the products of companies with their own in their advertising brochure depends on the views of different ethical theories. An egoist may view the action to be morally right as the EU company promotes their own...