MGMT368 Columbia College HB Fuller Company Case Study Paper After reading Case 6.3 on page 300 in the text, answer the following question: What are H. B. F

MGMT368 Columbia College HB Fuller Company Case Study Paper After reading Case 6.3 on page 300 in the text, answer the following question: What are H. B. Fuller’s moral obligations in this case? What ideals, effects, and consequences are at stake? Have any moral rights been violated? What would a utilitarian recommend? A Kantian?Must be at least two pages, double-spaced, 12-point sans serif font, with 1 inch margins all around. Cite all sources MLA. Question:
After reading Case 6.3 on page 300 in the text, answer the
following question: What are H. B. Fuller’s moral obligations in
this case? What ideals, effects, and consequences are at stake?
Have any moral rights been violated? What would a utilitarian
recommend? A Kantian?
Text Info: PG. 300
Case 6.3
Sniffing Glue Could Snuff Profits
HARVEY BENJAMIN FULLER FOUNDED THE H. B. Fuller Company in 1887. Originally a one-man
wallpaper-paste shop, H. B. Fuller is now a leading manufacturer of industrial glues, coatings, and paints,
with operations worldwide. The company’s 10,000 varieties of glue hold together everything from cars
to cigarettes to disposable diapers. However, some of its customers don’t use Fuller’s glues in the way
they are intended to be used.
That’s particularly the case in Central America, where Fuller derives 27 percent of its profits and where
tens of thousands of homeless children sniff some sort of glue. Addicted to glue’s intoxicating but
dangerous fumes, these unfortunate children are called resistoleros after Fuller’s Resistol brand. Childwelfare advocates have urged the company to add a noxious oil to its glue to discourage abusers, but
the company has resisted, either because it might reduce the glue’s effectiveness or because it will
irritate legitimate users.111
Either way, the issue is irritating H. B. Fuller, which has been recognized by various awards, honors, and
socially conscious mutual funds as a company with a conscience. Fuller’s mission statement says that it
“will conduct business legally and ethically, support the activities of its employees in their communities
and be a responsible corporate citizen.” The St. Paul-based company gives 5 percent of its profits to
charity; it has committed itself to safe environmental practices worldwide (practices that are “often
more stringent than local government standards,” the company says); and it has even endowed a chair
in business ethics at the University of Minnesota. Now Fuller must contend with dissident stockholders
inside, and demonstrators outside, its annual meetings.
The glue-sniffing issue is not a new one. In 1969, the Testor Corporation added a noxious ingredient to
its hobby glue to discourage abuse, and in 1994 Henkel, a German chemical company that competes
with Fuller, stopped making certain toxic glues in Central America. However, Fuller seems to have been
singled out for criticism not only because its brand dominates Central America but also because—in the
eyes of its critics, anyway—the company has not lived up to its own good-citizen image. Timothy Smith,
executive director of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, believes that companies with a
reputation as good corporate citizens are more vulnerable to attack. “But as I see it,” he says, “the
hazard is not in acting in a socially responsible way. The hazard is in over-marketing yourself as a saint.”
Saintly or not, the company has made matters worse for itself by its handling of the issue. H. B. Fuller’s
board of directors acknowledged that “illegal distribution was continuing” and that “a suitable
replacement product would not be available in the near future.” Accordingly, it voted to stop selling
Resistol adhesives in Central America. “We simply don’t believe it is the right decision to keep our
solvent product on the market,” a company spokesman said.
The Coalition on Resistoleros and other corporate gadflies were ecstatic, but their jubilation turned to
anger when they learned a few months later that Fuller had not in fact stopped selling Resistol in Central
America and did not intend to. True, Fuller no longer sold glue to retailers and small-scale users in
Honduras and Guatemala, but it continued to sell large tubs and barrels of it to industrial customers in
those countries and to a broader list of commercial and industrial users in neighboring countries.
The company says that it has not only restricted distribution but also taken other steps to stop the abuse
of its product. It has altered Resistol’s formula, replacing the sweet-smelling but highly toxic solvent
toluene with the slightly less toxic chemical cyclohexane. In addition, the company has tried—without
success, it says—to develop a nonintoxicating water-based glue, and it contributes to community
programs for homeless children in Central America. But the company’s critics disparage these actions as
mere image polishing. Bruce Harris, director of Latin American programs for Covenant House, a
nonprofit child-welfare advocate, asserts that Resistol is still readily available to children in Nicaragua
and El Salvador and, to a lesser extent, in Costa Rica. “If they are genuinely concerned about the
children,” he asks, “why haven’t they pulled out of all the countries—as their board mandated?”

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