Management and Ethics

Monica Lewinsky , a White House intern with whom US President Bill Clinton “never had sexual relations”

She made a considerable amount of money through the publication of her story and through her TV interviews.

Her eventual employment also relied on the fact that she was a well known figure.

Did the various companies involved in funding or employing her act unethically?

Your company purchased outright its Victorian office and sales centre only to find that you had bought a lemon.

The roof leaked in heavy weather, and you already had to renew the carpets. The heating and cooling costs were monstrous, most likely due to inadequate insulation.

These plus numerous smaller defects finally push you into selling the premises and renting elsewhere.

You instruct the Victorian manager to hide the defects as best she could and sell the property for as much as she can get for it – hopefully as much as your company had paid.

Ethical?

Ted Oats, an office worker

Takes every sick day due as his right.

Is this Ethical?

Buying through a third party to make sure the seller is not aware that you are a developer?

Taking your clients with you when you change jobs.?

Acceding to terrorist demands, then breaking the commitments you made?

Or: A hold-up at a bank, with staff taken hostage for $500,000 and safe conduct out of the country. You promise, and then arrest him?

Janet Leis was a person that you got on well with.

Cheerful, a little overweight and certainly a workplace friend.

She made no secret to you that she was using the office stamps, and in fact had stated that it was a great help to her.

Janet was middle aged, divorced and struggling.

She had told you that she didn’t take much and most of it was to send off payments for her weekly bills.

You didn’t use the stamps machine yourself. What would be your response?

What if you are someone on the same organisational level as Janet Leis (the indiscriminate user of the office stamps machine).

You sit in the office alongside the office supplies and service equipment, including the stamps machine, and had noticed Janet using the machine.

She wasn’t particularly a friend of yours, and you felt a little annoyed that she was taking stamps.

You felt that you were not willing to do it yourself and not would not condone it.

What would you do?

You both work for a large multinational One that has featured in the newspapers

for its various environmental transgressions

Neither you nor Janet have any great sympathy for the company or for those of the senior management that you know.

Company policy was clear…..no stamps, telephone calls, long lunches, no early afternoons.

Does it make any difference ?

Fred Maxwell was an incompetent employee. A draughtsman in the design office , but a pubic service employee, the rules for terminating him were impossibly difficult. It was very clear to you that the output and quality of work of your group was adversely affected by his incompetence. You decide to ride him to the extent that he quit. You complained of his work, frequently told him that he needed to pull his socks up, and on a couple of occasions referred to his work as bum fodder. There was no doubt in your mind that the benefit to the company if he left would outweigh any discomfort that you were causing Maxwell.

Tom Delaney was selling marijuana, not in office hours, but many of the people who bought from him were from the company. You decided to tackle him about it. He was quite open, saying that he was doing nothing wrong. Marijuana was no worse that alcohol and should have been legalised years ago. He never sold it inside the company anyway. (a) Was Tom’s argument valid? (b) What further should you do about it? You had read somewhere that recent studies had found marijuana to be detrimental.

What weight should you give to the counter argument that someone else will just start selling the marijuana anyway, so why bother?

Tony Hamer was an analyst with one of the big minerals companies. He had no hesitation in using the information that he gathered through his work to buy and sell on the stock market. His access to reliable information on big winners was extremely rare, but on one buy-sell transaction he had netted close to $400,000. He claimed that his actions were ethical. He neither helped nor harmed anybody, caused no great deal of happiness or pain, was stealing from nobody, and telling no untruths. The law was wrong, he said, and he had no moral obligation to follow it. Was Hamer correct?

Chris Haigh is a elderly pensioner who has asked your company to replace the steps up to his front door with a ramp. He believes the ramp will be much easier to negotiate. On one of your trips out to inspect the work you were made quite clear about Chris’s attitude to the new Goods and Services Tax, which he regarded as a deliberate imposition on pensioners and others least able to pay. You in fact agreed with him. You were not surprised then when Chris offered to pay for the ramp in cash, without any paperwork, if you did not charge him the tax. Is Chris being unethical?