Nick: The Pincus family and their construction company have supported our university financially for decades. The uni...

manvir on December 19, 2019

I had the same question

Skylar on December 21, 2019

@Ryan-Mahabir and @manvir, happy to help!

(A) is incorrect because it is too vague. Pedro is not arguing that loyalty can never be a consideration is business. Instead, he is speaking about this one specific situation, and he may have a different definition than Nick regarding what constitutes loyalty.

(C) is correct because Nick claims that the university should not contract with a donor's competitor because of its relationship with the donor. This shows that Nick believes the university should/is obligated to act in a way that does not hurt its relationship with the donors. However, Pedro claims that "accepting a donation does not oblige the university to give the donor any special privileges" and that the contract should be given to whichever company provides the best bid, regardless of connection to donors or not. Therefore, Nick and Pedro disagree over what the university owes the donors in terms of awarding the contract.

Does this make sense? Please reach out with any other questions!

fady-yatooma on August 22, 2020

But Nick never said the university is obliged, he is just saying it would be disloyal to a friend to do that, that does not mean they are obligated by the donation!?

Emil-Kunkin on May 12 at 05:04PM

Good question about obligation: I think the term special obligation as used in the answer choice does not mean an absolute obligation. I think it is referring to the idea that the university should give special status to one company in particular, which, while not obligating them to take a certain action, could tip the scales towards that one company.