From a business perspective, working under government
contracts can be a very lucrative proposition. In general, a stream of
orders keep coming in, revenue increases and the company grows in the
aggregate. The obvious downfalls to working in this manner is both
higher quality expected as well as the extensive research and
documentation required for government contracts. If a part fails to
perform correctly it can cause minor glitches as well as problems that
can carry serious repercussions, such as in the National Semiconductor
case. When both the culpable component and company are found, the
question arises of how extensive these repercussions should be. Is the
company as an entity liable or do you look into individual employees
within that company? From an ethical perspective one would have to
look at the mitigating factors of both the employees and their
superiors along with the role of others in the failure of these
components. Next you would have to analyze the final ruling from a
corporate perspective and then we must examine the macro issue of
corporate responsibility in order to attempt to find a resolution for
cases like these.
The first mitigating factor involved in the National
Semiconductor case is the uncertainty, on the part of the employees,
on the duties that they were assigned. It is plausible that during the
testing procedure, an employee couldnt distinguish which parts they
were to test under government standards and commercial standards. In
some cases they might have even been misinformed on the final
consumers of the products that they tested. In fact, ignorance on the
part of the employees would fully excuse ...