RESOLVING ETHICAL BUSINESS CHALLENGES Charles worked at Butterfly Corporation fo
ID: 352123 • Letter: R
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RESOLVING ETHICAL BUSINESS CHALLENGES Charles worked at Butterfly Corporation for two years involved as well, especially their customers. Charles was after graduating from the University of Texas. He liked nterested in assessing the overall corporate culture of his job but the firm was going through some rough the firm. Because Charles knew his data analysis skills times. Because the firm was losing money, Douglas, the CEO Charles noticed a lot of employees were grumbling about nization for years and knew the system inside and out these unrealistic expectations. He also heard rumors of quality control incidents and other problems were not good, he mmended br nging in a commit rga ngly rigorous performance go t coworkers who had been in the o s Butterfly could He also developed a list of organi hire to verify the results once data was collected and One day Charles was called into Douglas's office. analyzed Hello, Doug. You wanted to see me?" Charles asked. The next day, Charles turned in his report and waited while Doug read through it. When finished, he “Yes, Charles. Come in." Doug looked grim. After Charles sat down, he began to speak. "Look, you know about the tough times we are in. We are losing money left and right. So far I've been able to keep this company looked up at Charles and frowned. "Charles, I can see you put a lot of work into this However, what you have recommended is not going to afloat by drastically making cuts and speeding up pro suit our needs." “What do you mean?" Charles asked. duction. I guess in all this cost-cutting, there have been problems that have come up. A lot of people have called the hotline to complain about ethical problems, such as employees cutting corners to make their quotas. Now "First off, I already told you, I don't want to remove people from their jobs to work on this. We're behind schedule as it is. Also, focus groups of employees and customer feedback? That's going to take up time and resources we can't afford to lose. You also propose hir ing an independent third party? We're supposed to be cutting costs, not throwing money at some organization simply to check our results." I've got the board on my back." "I'm really sorry, Doug. How can I help?" Charles asked. "Well, the board requested we perform an ethics audit to make sure everyone is complying with company As if we don't ha abo "So what would you like me to do then?" Charle sked lati egu This is only going to i s. Anyway, I wan to lead the audit" Do ug sig hed. “That's why I made you the person in Charles was stunned. "Me? But Doug, I've only been here for two years. Shouldn't you choose a more experi charge of the project. You make the decisions. Just make ure it's something that won't cost a lot of money. I want his process to go as quickly as pos board and get back to work. Maybe you could survey a ew emp make us look good. enced manager to lead this?" ible so we satisfy the Doug shook his head. "We need all our managers to e doing their jobs. I don't have the time to pull ilities just because W emem them aw res Doug handed back Charles's propo nd bring it back to me tomorrow" he said the board wants us to do an ethics audit Revise this Charles agreed to lead the audit process. Tha night he arched how to conduct an ethi promised to have a rudimentary plan outlining how the ethics audit should be conducted on Doug's desk for approval the next day. As he researched on the Inter- net, he became more excited. He spent hours forming the audit's scope, and defining what he thought should be the firms ethi- cal priorities. He created a plan for using focus groups QUESTIONS | EXERCISES 1. What is a key component of a successful auditing process missing from this situation? 2. How would you describe the corporate culture of ectives for the audit, determi Butterfly? 3. What steps would you recommend Charles take? of employees to see what the greatest concerns were."This case is strictly hypothetical; any resemblance to real persons, If time permitted, he wanted to get other stakeholder companies, or situations is coincidental.Explanation / Answer
1. The key objectives of a successful audit is to identify the areas of concern, correct them to prevent them from causing damages and learning from the experience. In this case, the objective of the audit is only an eyewash, and to satisfy the top management. Here, the audit is being done, not to find out any gaps or doing corrections, but only for the sake of carrying out orders. It can be said that the "Intent" is the vital element that is missing.
2. The corporate culture of Butterfly is that of self centered individuals, who are not working for the greater good of the organization, but trying to save their skins by doing the formalities, without being a bit of interested in reaching the root cause of the issue. They are not honest to their work, and believe that showing that "all is well" is going to save their day.
3.Charles needs to revise his plan to do the exercise as efficienty as possible within the sanctioned resources and try to find out as many insights possible to find out the root cause of the issue. Though the work will not be of as good quality as proposed by him earlier, but still, it will be a learning experience for him to work with constraints. At least, the positive attitude will be helpful for him in future.
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