Research Proposal on "Business Discuss the Ethical Concepts and Dilemmas"

Quoted Instructions for "Business Discuss the Ethical Concepts and Dilemmas" Assignment:

Assignment #3 *****“ How Personal Can Ethics Get (Integrating cases in textbook).

APA

*****¢ Students will prepare a 3 to 4 page analysis responding to the following:

o Discuss the ethical concepts and dilemmas that are facing Valerie?

o If you were Valerie, what would you do? Why?

o Discuss the types of stressors are being experienced by Valerie.

o Discuss Valerie*****s manager, Waters, in relationship to his ethics in handling business and employees.

o Discuss the aspects of the corporate culture that contributed to the dilemma.

*****¢ The report will be graded using the following rubric.

Grading Rubric for Assignment # 3 *****“ Ethics

Criteria

(180 total points) 0

Unacceptable 1

Developing 2

Competent 3

Exemplary

1Discuss the ethical concepts and dilemmas that are facing Valerie. No ethical concepts or dilemmas were discussed. One ethical concept or dilemmas was discussed. Two ethical concepts or dilemmas were discussed. Three ethical concepts or dilemmas were discussed.

2. The student discusses what they would do if they were Valarie. Does not attempt assignment, nor discusses what the student would do if they were Valerie. The action to be taken if the student was Valerie were discussed, but with less than 60 - 79% accuracy and some of the discussion points were inappropriate or were not identified. The action to be taken if the student was Valerie were discussed, with 80 - 89% accuracy and appropriate information was discussed. The action to be taken if the student was Valerie we discussed with 90 to 100% accuracy and all appropriate information was identified and discussed clearly.

3. Discuss the stressors being experienced by Valerie. No stressors were discussed. One stressor was discussed. Two stressors were discussed. Three stressors were discussed.

4. Discuss Waters ethics in relationship to handling business and employees. Does not attempt assignment, nor discusses how the culture Waters ethics in relationship to business and employees. The ethics of Water*****s in relationship to business and employees were discussed, but with less than 60 - 79% accuracy and some of the discussion points were inappropriate or were not identified. The ethics of Water*****s in relationship to business and employees were discussed, with 80 - 89% accuracy and appropriate information was discussed. The ethics of Water*****s in relationship to business and employees were discussed with 90 to 100% accuracy and all appropriate information was identified and discussed clearly.

5. Discuss the aspects of corporate culture that contributed to the dilemma. Does not attempt assignment, nor discusses the aspects of corporate culture that contributed to the dilemma. The aspects of corporate culture contributing to the dilemma were discussed, but with less than 60 - 79% accuracy and some of the discussion points were inappropriate or were not identified. The impact of culture and work environment on performance results were discussed, with 80 - 89% accuracy and appropriate information was discussed. The impact of culture and work environment on performance results were discussed with 90 to 100% accuracy and all appropriate information was identified and discussed clearly.

6 Writing *****“ Grammar, spelling, punctuation

(APA, if required) Sentences / paragraph structure, spelling, and punctuation

APA usage

8+ errors

(Many issues) Sentences / paragraph structure, spelling, and punctuation

APA usage

6 -7 errors

(Many issues) Sentences / paragraph structure, spelling, and punctuation

APA usage

4 *****“ 5 different errors

(Minor issues) Sentences / paragraph structure, spelling, and punctuation

APA usage

0 - 3 different errors

How Personal Can Ethics Get?

This is a true case. Names have been changed to protect

identities.

Valerie Young was a marketing manager at an international

cosmetics and fragrance company, Wisson,

which is headquartered in Chicago. Wisson underwent a

major reorganization due to cost cutting. Valerie*****s department

was downsized from 25 to 10 people the year

before. They did survive as a small team though, and

their role within the organization was unique*****”acting as

an agency, delivering designs for bottles and packaging

and developing the fragrances for their brands.

Valerie*****s manager, Lionel Waters, had been with the

department for 14 years. He was hired by Wisson*****s

CEO at the time, after he had worked for big names in

the fragrance industry. He had launched one of the most

successful female fragrances in the industry several years

before. Waters joined the company in order to start new

product lines for the company in the mass fragrance

market. He then hired two close friends as executives

with salaries well above industry standards and gave

them each six weeks annual vacation. Teams were

formed around them quickly and after three years, each

team had its own line of fragrances that were launched

worldwide.

Nature of Work Valerie was hired to contribute organizational,

financial, and marketing skills. The rest of

the team was mainly comprised of creative individuals

who had basically no interest whatsoever in the dry

theoretical world of calculating numbers and strategies.

Valerie had not worked in the beauty industry before,

but was eager to learn everything about the world of

scents and how they were developed. At that time, the

department worked with many different perfumers from

several fragrance companies. The perfumers themselves,

or their representatives, came to present their

creations for new projects, or the Wisson teams went to

their suppliers***** offices in France to conduct so-called

*****fragrance sessions.*****

It takes time to develop a fragrance product that will

end up being a perfect creation on the counters of the

world*****s department stores. The name, concept, design

of the bottle and packaging, advertising, and, last but not

least, the fragrance has to be put together to create an

innovative and uniquely new product. Fragrance development

itself takes a tremendous amount of time.

First, the perfumers are briefed about the new

project so that they can base their creations on already

firm ideas about the end product. Then, for every new

project in the department, at least 300 to 400 samples are

submitted by the perfumers. The majority of those

samples are usually discarded right away after *****smelling*****

for the first time because the scent did not match the

concept or simply did not smell good enough. Some are

set aside, smelled again and again, and during that

process, the perfumers get feedback about what to

change. Sometimes Valerie*****s team got 20 reworked

submissions for one scent and it often happened that

after all that work, the original was picked as the best

choice. In the final phase, three to four fragrances remain

and only those few go on to the market research

testing phase.

During Valerie*****s first year at the company, the team

worked with as many as eight different fragrance companies

to have a good diversity of new scent ideas. After

a while, they began using only perfumers from two

fragrance companies for their projects. She was wondering

why they stopped working with the other perfumers,

because their submissions were not bad at all

and they also successfully supply Wisson*****s competitors.

Why were these perfumers not good enough for Wisson?

It did not take long for the team members to realize

that Waters was not to be questioned. The team

then went forward and developed great relationships

with the perfumers of the two remaining fragrance

houses.

The Incident And then one day, it all became clear to

Valerie. She had some copies to make and walked to the

copy room in the office area. As she was putting her

originals in the copy machine, she saw that there was a

paper jam, and the person who caused it left without

taking care of it. She started to open the drawers of the

paper supply and checked the output tray. There were

some sheets that someone must have forgotten and she

was going to throw them in the recycling container next

to the copy machine. As soon as she grabbed the sheets,

she saw that they looked like her boss*****s private company*****s

stationary (he had a consulting company on the

side). So Valerie looked closer and realized that what

was in her hand were invoices from Waters to the two

fragrance companies Wisson worked with that listed

*****commissions and fees***** totaling almost $35,000 per

month! So that was the reason Wisson stopped working

with other companies*****”they probably refused to pay

Waters***** kickbacks!

Valerie was stunned. She was left shocked and

speechless. Almost as if it were like a reflex action, she

took all her papers and the invoices and walked back to

her office. Sitting there for a while, she tried to calm

down. So many questions were running through her

528 P a r t 5 Integrating Cases

head: *****Does anyone else know about this? Are other

people on our team involved? Is this normal in the industry?

Should I talk to anyone about it?*****

All kinds of thoughts were spinning inside her, and

she spent the rest of that workday walking around as if

she was in a cloud. Fortunately her boss was not in that

day. He was probably on vacation, just like the 20 other

weeks per year of time off he grants himself.

When Valerie came home the night of her discovery,

she told her boyfriend about it. This is one of those

situations when you have to tell somebody; otherwise

you think you are going to explode. Her boyfriend was

not directly affected by this, so she could confide in him

and be sure of his honest opinion. First, he did not quite

understand what she was saying because it sounded so

outrageous, but then he realized what had happened.

He asked her if she had told anyone else about it, and

when she assured him that she had not, he recommended

that she keep this information to herself for the

time being, not because he is not an ethical person

himself, but because he knew that her career in Chicago

could be in danger if something happened to her boss.

After all, her boss was in charge of the department and if

he were gone, the already small team might not survive

either.

Valerie*****s Dilemmas Valerie did not have a U.S. green

card, only a special working visa, which allows non*****“U.S.

citizens with unique skills to work in this country for a

certain amount of time. This kind of visa is completely

dependent on the *****fairness***** of the company someone is

working for, and means that Valerie could lose the right

to work, or even the right to stay in the United States if

she did not have this job any longer.

And that was not all. She had just been accepted for

the master*****s of science program at the University of

Chicago and was looking forward to starting it. Her

tuition would be reimbursed by the company if she got

A*****s and B*****s in her classes. This was a huge opportunity to

gear her career toward greater challenges and successes.

But what about ethics? What about her own values?

In this situation, there was so much more at stake than

just right or wrong. The decision she had to make would

influence other people*****s lives as well as her own. Her

colleagues had become her friends, and even though her

boss disregarded good management and leadership

principles, these individuals formed friendships among

themselves, particularly since they had been reduced to

only a handful of people. Instead of joining his team in

building up not only professional but also friendly relationship

with his employees, Waters preferred to look

for only one goal*****”to enrich himself. He did not care

about relationships with other fragrance companies either.

Perfumers are somewhat like artists; they sometimes

work well under pressure and they are often

inspired by their customers as well. To have the greatest

diversity of fragrance submissions, Waters should have

worked with perfumers from more than only two

companies. This would have given Wisson*****s products a

big competitive advantage.

Waters was a constant example of how not to be

ethical in handling business and employees. Instead of

being a leader who would help activate ethics mindfulness

in others, he was the polar opposite. He seemed to

have made it one of his goals to spend as much of the

company*****s money as possible. Launch events went

overboard with extravagances and expenses; on one

occasion, just to show off his horseback riding talent, he

rented an entire stable outside of Chicago for one hour.

The cost: $25,000*****”and he expensed it to the company.

Usually he showed up late for meetings or canceled

them entirely even when the attendees were already in

the office. Or, he would tell someone *****something really

important***** came up, and then relate a completely different

version to somebody else. Waters***** team did all the

work and had to make most decisions without him because

he was rarely around. Mondays and Fridays he

usually stayed home or at his other office, and with some

traveling and all that vacation time, there was never

much opportunity to actually work with him. So they

learned to be efficient and productive by themselves

without the person who was supposed to be their team

leader, teacher, and supervisor. It finally deteriorated to

the point that even the most positive colleagues realized

that Waters contributed nothing to either the work level

or to morale, both of which were already low. And that

was without even being burdened with the things Valerie

now knew!

Could she let her boss get away with this? Was she

not obligated to report this? After all, in the company*****s

policies it was clearly stated:

Personal payments, bribes or kickbacks to customers

or suppliers or the receipt of kickbacks, bribes or

personal payments by employees are absolutely

prohibited.

How could she even work with Waters any longer

under these circumstances? She felt her anger toward

him growing stronger. What kind of person was this

man? Was he just a greedy human being? Didn*****t he

make enough money already? He has always acted as if

he were the most naïve person in the office, and now

she*****s discovered this! She wished she had never seen

those papers. It would have been much easier for her to

continue her work and conduct *****business as usual.*****

Valerie*****s Decision and Rationale What Valerie had to

do, or not do, somehow became an easy decision for her.

It was clear that she was unable to report this before she

had another job or even before she graduated from the

master*****s program, which was her ultimate short-term

Integrating Cases 529

goal. Getting another job is not easy without a green

card. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has

made it more difficult for non*****“U.S. citizens to work in

the United States, so companies hesitate to hire people

like Valerie because it means a lot of paperwork and

expenses for them. Also, workers with Valerie*****s type of

visa have only 30 days to find a new job in the event they

lose theirs; otherwise, they are required to leave the

country.

Basically, Valerie did not really have a choice if she

did not want to become a martyr for the ethics cause. She

decided to wait for a while before bringing these findings

to light, at least until she was close to graduating from the

master*****s program so that she could receive her degree. It

seemed that the highly ethical stance would be to report

this right away, but it also seemed silly to sacrifice herself

and her own future for the sake of *****outing***** someone who

had been so unethical. Did she act morally and ethically

correctly? She felt that she put her own interests before

ethics for now, and that bothered her deeply, but she

knew she was going to do what had to be done as soon as

her circumstances allowed for it.

Valerie*****s discovery changed everything, and nothing.

She still had to set up meetings with their long-time

perfumers, and participate and act as if she knew nothing

about what happened. She did try talking to Waters

about involving other fragrance companies again. Her

stated reason to him was that Wisson only receives approximately

100 submissions per project now, instead of

the 300 to 400 in prior years. He was not willing to

discuss that topic at all though, which obviously did not

surprise her. She wondered whether the perfumers

knew about these sweet deals too, or if they believed that

their hard work won them their projects. Every time

Waters said something regarding the importance of

keeping the fragrance development as this team*****s responsibility,

she said to herself, *****Yes, and I know why!*****

What Next? When the timing is right, and Valerie

makes this crucial information *****public,***** of course,

Waters and his future will be affected. He will certainly

lose his job, could possibly face criminal charges, and his

reputation in the industry will be destroyed. For the

team, the question will be if it can survive without him.

The teams do have a very strong brand manager among

them, who has an excellent reputation within the Wisson

organization. Perhaps he will be able to take over the

team and restart this department the right way.

*****