For the 18 spying activities listed as follows, indicate whether or not you believe the activity is ethical or unethical and legal or illegal. Place either an E for ethical or U for unethical, and either an L for legal or an I for illegal for each activity. Compare your answers to those of your classmates and discuss any differences.
- Buying competitors' garbage
- Dissecting competitors' products
- Taking competitors' plant tours anonymously
- Counting tractor-trailer trucks leaving competitors' loading bays
- Studying aerial photographs of competitors' facilities
- Analyzing competitors' labor contracts
- Analyzing competitors' help-wanted ads
- Quizzing customers and buyers about the sales of competitors' products
- Infiltrating customers' and competitors' business operations
- Quizzing suppliers about competitors' level of manufacturing
- Using customers to buy out phony bids
- Encouraging key customers to reveal competitive information
- Quizzing competitors' former employees
- Interviewing consultants who may have worked with competitors
- Hiring key managers away from competitors
- Conducting phony job interviews to get competitors' employees to reveal information
- Sending engineers to trade meetings to quiz competitors' technical employees
- Quizzing potential employees who worked for or with competitors