Solodor Pharmaceutical Case Summary

There is a long list of stakeholders involved in the case that may be affected by Roger McDaniel’s decisions. First, Roger himself will be affected by the actions he chooses. He could benefit through the satisfaction of helping sick people and through the monetary gain with the vesting of his stock options. Or he might lose his job and tarnish the reputation he has spent years building. The patients are stakeholders in his decisions whereby if he does not find a way to finance operations until Celenza reaches the market, the patients may never have access to the medication. The lower income sub-group of terminal patients have the potential to be affected by the decisions Roger makes in regards to how to finance continued operations. If …show more content…
Beyond the terminal patients, their families will be affected. They could lose their family members and friends sooner from the disease or be under incredible financial burden trying to finance the medical care for them. Steve Butler is affected by Roger’s decisions as Roger cheated him out of a good investment. Steve’s assistant may lose his/her job for sending the wrong document to Roger. Roger’s choices can affect Solodor Pharmaceutical (SP) in that if he makes right choices, they will continue to operate and potentially help sick people but if he makes the wrong ones, it could not only hurt their reputation but force the company to close its doors which would affect the employees, as they will lose their jobs. If SP liquidates, they will not pay what they owe to their creditors. Beth Sullivan has to choose whether to cover-up Roger’s actions and possibly get in trouble too or report him to the Board of Directors. Dugas Incorporated is affected through the sale of shares at a low price due to leaked insider information. Lastly, if he makes poor choices, the accounting profession as a whole may be affected. People will look poorly at the it and, as shown in the past, …show more content…
As mentioned in Ethical Decision Making by Individuals in Organizations: An Issue-Contingent Model, by Thomas M. Jones, there are three important parts of ethical decision making: the moral issue, the moral agent, and the resulting ethical decision. Beth needed to be able to recognize the issue at hand, decide what is the most beneficial outcome, evaluate alternative actions to achieve that outcome, and then follow through with the decided upon action. Jones explains that in order to participate in moral decision making, the moral agent must make decisions by on one’s own volition, meaning they must choose one option over another. He also further defines a moral decision as one that is both legal and morally acceptable to the larger community and immoral decision as either illegal or morally unacceptable to the larger community. In my opinion, Beth’s only choice was between blowing the whistle on an illegal, immoral act perpetrated by Roger or to keep quiet in the continuance of the cover-up, which is against both the law and the code of conduct of her profession. While this could potentially affect the terminally ill patients, I believe they weren’t part of her moral dilemma. I believe that it was the responsibility of Roger and those involved before her to make the moral decisions on behalf of the patients. They had alternatives to choose from