Suppose toyota and honda must decide whether to make a new breed of side-impact airbags standard equipment on all models. side-impact airbags raise the price of each automobile by $1,000. if both firms make side-impact airbags standard equipment, each company will earn profits of $3.5 billion. if neither company adopts the side-impact airbag technology, each company will earn $2 billion. if one company adopts the technology as standard equipment and the other does not, the adopting company will earn a profit of $4.5 billion and the other company will earn $0.5 billion.

David burdick is the ceo of acme bubblegum, a successful public company. as one of the cofounders of the company, burdick has enjoyed speaking and writing about the success of acme bubblegum for several years. typically, he speaks at conferences or directly to the press, but recently, he has been blogging about his firm anonymously. specifically, he defended a recent advertising campaign that was unpopular among consumers and pointedly attacked one of acme bubblegum’s competitors. burdick deeply enjoys his anonymous blogging and believes that none of his readers actually know that he works for acme bubblegum.should burdick be allowed to praise his company’s performance anonymously online? should he be allowed to attack his competitors without disclosing his relationship with the company? how would you feel if the ceo of a company at which you shopped was secretly writing criticisms of his or her competition? how would you feel if you knew a writer for your favorite blog was actually closely involved in a company that the blog discussed? 1. define the ethical issue? 2. who are the primary stakeholders? 3. what are the possible alternatives? 4. how could you evaluate the ethical implications of the alternative actions (use appropriate decision rules)? 5. what action would you recommend and why?