Nowadays two contradicting notions – business and ethics – are closely interwoven. People use morality and ethical issues as the main power for achieving business success. Hence, many companies manipulate moral principles and human feelings to raise their incomes and to set a stable position in the market. Sometimes this slight infringement is not available for the law so that managers often break the balance between human relationships and the human environment. The following case considers the ethical dilemma within business domain that requires a legal interference. The case with ‘injury odds’ in “The Odds of a Disability Are Themselves Odd” (Lieber 2010) shows the way the insurance company overuses human trust and feeling for gaining more profits.
The main ethical bias of the case lies in the fact that many American people do not have enough guarantees for their losses to be reimbursed. However, those workers who are not insured are threatened by the security companies by ‘veritable’ numbers of injuries that occurred during the working day. No doubt, the insurance industry takes advantage of the ambiguity of numbers bringing the enormous revenues every day. People who feel anxious about those injury odds follow blindly the statistics made by disability insurance companies.
The main problem consists in misperception of the information delivered by the National Safety Council and its general definition of the term “disability”, which does not necessarily mean a serious injury. Despite serious moral biases, the statistic still has a positive side for people and for social security, as those ‘injury odds’ statistic considerably decreases the injury rates.
Misconceptions arising in the insurance realm are explained by the absence of veritable information about numbers. The problem of inaccurate data lies in the neglected attitude to disability problems and the working ethics. According to the statistic, white-collar professionals complain of injuries more often than ‘assembly line workers’ do. The results of false complain turn into a false statistics, which is rather preferable for disability insurance companies.
Considering the problem from the legal point of view, the policy of insurance companies is pure and lawful, as they use official statistics for their insurance strategies. Besides, the suffered part played last but not the least role in this situation thus spreading false information about the seriousness of injuries. However, there exist several stumbling blocks that make the situation morally and ethically unacceptable. On the one hand, the explicit intention of the company is to enhance the security of working conditions and to improve their productivity. However, this nice picture is distorted by the implicit purposes of the company striving to gain profit based on a human fear.
Another misconception of the case lies in disinformation of the customers frightened by the incredible statistic. Here the insurance company should have carried out a more profound research and define veritable injury accidents at plants and factories. Being aware of the inaccuracy of the data, the Council neglects the truth and resorts to a false data proliferation on the purpose. Therefore, the case with ‘injury odds’ is odd in terms of moral infringement and negligence of human needs for the sake of high income. The case cannot be subjected to the lawsuit as it has ethical biases only, which can be perceived in a different way. Still, the moral dilemma can be solved if people pay more attention to the validity of the information.
Reference
Lieber, R. (2010). Your Money: The Odds of a Disability Are Themselves Odd. New York Times. Web.
