LEAD 4053 Module 2 Ethical Theory Application Example

The Swab Passed but the Kit Ran Out: Four Ethical Theories Applied to a Nut-Free Shipment Decision

Student Name

American College of Education

LEAD4053: Ethical and Legal Management Issues in Leadership

Module 2 Assignment

Instructor Name

November 23, 2026

Introduction

The first module of this course examined how the Peanut Corporation of America came to ship contaminated food. This paper turns to a smaller decision of the kind I face as a second-shift supervisor at the composite Ohio snack bar plant described there. No law has clearly been broken yet, no one has acted in bad faith and the right answer is not obvious to everyone in the room. The paper describes the dilemma and the realistic options, applies four ethical theories to the same facts, considers the moral intensity of the issue and recommends a course of action with the reasons a supervisor could defend to the plant manager and to the customer.

The Dilemma

On a Thursday night, line 2 changed over from a peanut butter bar to an oat bar sold as nut-free to a distributor that supplies school cafeterias. Our written procedure requires two checks before a nut-free run: a general swab that detects organic residue, and an allergen-specific test strip that detects peanut protein on food-contact surfaces. The general swab passed. The peanut test strips had run out the previous day, and a reorder had not arrived. The sanitation lead told me after the run had started. By then 14,400 bars were made. The distributor's truck arrives at 6 a.m., a missed delivery carries a $9,000 penalty and the contract is worth about $1.1 million a year. The plant manager texted that the swab passed and the bars should ship.

The Options

Four options are realistic. Option A is to ship the bars as nut-free on the strength of the general swab and a visual inspection. Option B is to hold the lot, send finished bars to an outside laboratory for peanut protein testing, with results in about 48 hours, and tell the distributor the truth about the delay. Option C is to add a may-contain-peanuts statement and ship, which is lawful labeling but would make the bars useless to a school customer that ordered them precisely because they are nut-free. Option D is to destroy the lot and re-run after a fully verified cleaning, at a cost of about $6,000 in ingredients and labor, while still missing the morning delivery.

What Is at Stake

The stakes are not abstract. Gupta et al. (2018), surveying parents of more than 38,000 children, estimated that about 7.6% of children in the United States have a current food allergy, with peanut the most common at 2.2%, and that 42.3% of children with food allergies had experienced at least one severe reaction. A school cafeteria serving nut-free bars is serving them to exactly those children, often because their parents have been told the snack is safe. The chance that residue survived a cleaning that passed a general swab may be small. The harm if it did would be serious and would fall on children who cannot check a label for themselves.

A Utilitarian View

A utilitarian tallies the likely gains and losses of each option for all the people it touches and picks the option with the best net result. Shipping under Option A saves $9,000 and protects the contract, which protects jobs. Against that sits a low probability of a very severe outcome, an allergic reaction in a child, multiplied across thousands of servings, plus the risk of a recall and lasting damage to the plant's reputation. Option B costs a penalty and some goodwill but removes most of the uncertainty within two days. Option D removes all of it at a higher cost. A careful utilitarian calculation favors B or D, because even a small chance of a child's anaphylaxis outweighs a one-time penalty. Option A only looks attractive when the harm is quietly assumed to be zero.

A Duty-Based View

Duty-based ethics, rooted in Kant, judges an act by whether its principle could be followed by everyone and whether it treats people as ends rather than means. Labeling a product nut-free is a promise to the customer and, through the customer, to parents. Shipping without completing our own required verification would make that promise without knowing whether it is true. If every plant followed a rule of shipping nut-free product whenever a test kit was missing, the label would lose its meaning and the children relying on it would be used as the unknowing test of our cleaning. Option C avoids deception but defeats the purpose of the order. A duty-based view therefore supports B, or D if the customer cannot wait.

A Virtue View

A virtue approach shifts the question from the act to the actor: what would someone of sound character, holding this job, do tonight? Solomon (1992) argued that business ethics should start from the virtues of people inside particular roles and communities, so a manager's integrity means acting consistently as a good member of the company and of the wider community the company serves. A good food plant supervisor would be honest with the customer, careful with children's safety and loyal to the company in the deeper sense of protecting its trustworthiness, not only its delivery record. Courage is also needed, because the plant manager has already given an instruction. Option A would show compliance without integrity. Option B shows honesty and care while respecting the business.

A Justice View

Justice theories ask whether the burdens and benefits of a decision are fairly shared. Rawls (1971) proposed choosing rules from behind a veil of ignorance, without knowing which position one will occupy. Imagine drafting the plant's release rule with no idea whether you will end up as the plant manager, the distributor or a nine-year-old with a peanut allergy; nobody in that position would pick a rule that lets the plant ship unverified nut-free food to save a penalty. Under Option A, the benefit goes to the company and the risk goes to the children least able to protect themselves. Options B and D place the cost on the party that created the problem, the plant that let its test kits run out.

Moral Intensity

Jones (1991) argued that how people respond to an ethical issue depends on its moral intensity, including the magnitude of consequences, their probability, how soon they would occur, how concentrated they are on a few people and how close the decision maker feels to those affected. This case is high on magnitude and concentration and low on probability, while the children feel distant to people on a night shift. That mix explains why shipping feels acceptable inside the plant even though the analysis rejects it. Naming that distortion openly helps the team see why the plant manager's text, which focuses on the passed swab, leaves out the part that matters most.

Recommendation

All four theories point away from Option A, and three of them favor Option B. I would hold the lot, record the missing strips as a deviation, send samples to the outside laboratory and call the distributor before the truck leaves with a plain explanation and a revised delivery time. Nearly 2,000 bars from last week's verified lot are in the warehouse and can go on the truck to cover part of the order. I would reply to the plant manager in writing, explaining the procedure and the risk, and invite the plant manager onto the customer call. If the distributor cannot wait, Option D becomes the better choice. In either case, a standing minimum stock of test strips should be added to the changeover checklist.

Conclusion

The dilemma tests whether a written safety step is real when it costs money. Utilitarian, duty-based, virtue and justice reasoning all reject shipping unverified nut-free bars, and moral intensity explains why the shortcut still felt tempting. Holding the lot and telling the customer the truth protects the children who rely on the label and, over time, the contract as well.

References

Gupta, R. S., Warren, C. M., Smith, B. M., Blumenstock, J. A., Jiang, J., Davis, M. M., & Nadeau, K. C. (2018). The public health impact of parent-reported childhood food allergies in the United States. Pediatrics, 142(6), Article e20181235. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2018-1235

Jones, T. M. (1991). Ethical decision making by individuals in organizations: An issue-contingent model. Academy of Management Review, 16(2), 366-395. https://doi.org/10.2307/258867

Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Harvard University Press.

Solomon, R. C. (1992). Corporate roles, personal virtues: An Aristotelean approach to business ethics. Business Ethics Quarterly, 2(3), 317-339. https://doi.org/10.2307/3857536