Theranos Stakeholder's Moral Obligations

Theranos Stakeholder's Moral Obligations
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Theranos is described as Silicon Valley's greatest disaster due to the negative impacts it had on all its stakeholders, including investors, employees, board of directors, clients, and the society at large. Poised to be the greatest invention of the 21st century, Theranos had promised to revolutionize the health care industry by making a diagnosis of illness a cheap and less painful procedure. Having received hundreds of millions of investment funds, using patients for trial purposes without their consent, and irregularities in the results, Theranos was eventually exposed for its unethical practices through a whistleblower (InspireFest HQ, 2019). It was eventually discovered that the company's products were not working, and both investors and patients had been duped. Holmes and Balwani were charged for the company's irregularities and unethical practices. However, the question of moral obligations from other stakeholders remains a point of interest in this discussion.
It is evident that there was knowledge among the top officials of the company that the products they were selling were not functioning, and the results obtained were irregular. However, the stakeholders who benefited from the operations of the company had decided to remain quiet as long as their interests were not affected. Some of these stakeholders include the board of directors, investors, and employees at the company (Lackner & Plebani, 2018).
The board of directors plays a crucial role in the decision-making of a company, and this goes to the simplest decision that has to be made even on a lower level. Therefore, as the company faced numerous irregularities in its operations and expanded its operations, the board of directors must have been aware of the activities that were going on at the ground level. Also, the board of directors is placed with the responsibility of ensuring that the practices of the company are in standard with the provided guidelines and certifications within their history of operating (Schwartz, Dunfee, & Kline, 2005). Therefore, as being liable for the practices of the company, the board of directors were enablers of Therano's illegal operations and should be held responsible to some extent for their activities.
Investors were also enablers of Theranos operations but from a distance despite their significant contributions to the company's operations. Investors provided the funds necessary in carrying out the operations of the company, which included their unethical practices. However, unlike the board of directors, investors are detached from the company's operations, and their direct link is through the provision of funds. Investors are often interested in figures, and if it makes sense to them, they will invest money in the venture (Kandel, 2020). They believe that despite the complexity of an operation, with enough funds, ...