Sample MBA402 Governance Ethics and Sustainability Case Study 2

MBA402 Governance, Ethics, and Sustainability Case Study 2 Sample

Assignment Brief

The ability to handle difficult workplace conversations, and especially discussions concerning ethical issues, is a valuable skill at every level in a company (employee, manager, or Board Director).

The Giving Voice to Values (GVV) material introduced in the Week 6 workshop, provides tools to help employees, managers and company Directors stand up for their values in the workplace. Assessment 2 provides an opportunity to apply these tools to a realistic workplace scenario, to help build your capacity to handle difficult workplace conversations, while remaining true to your personal values.

Analyse the Case Study, then write a script to address the ethical problem described in the case. Reflect on the script that you produced.

Instructions

Read the Case Study document supplied. Analyse this document, ensuring you understand the ethical dilemma that the situation poses.

Write the following elements based on the case study. You should submit these as a single Word document, through Turnitin.

1. Case Analysis using the GVV approach (600 words):

- Identify the ethical issue, values at stake, and potential rationalisations of the key parties.

- Evaluate the potential impacts, on stakeholders and the organisation, in the event the issue is not addressed.

- Identify potential barriers to speaking up and propose strategies to overcome these barriers.

- Propose alternative actions aligned with GVV principles.

2. Script Development (600 words):

Develop a script where you give voice to values and address the ethical issue in the case.

- Use the GVV framework to structure your script.

- Clearly articulate your values and the reasons behind your stance.

- Address potential rationalisations (of others) and articulate them in the script

- Present effective counterarguments to these rationalisations.

- Consider the audience and tailor your message accordingly.

- Propose specific actions or solutions to address the ethical issue.

3. Reflection (Approximately 600 words):

Reflect on the process of applying the GVV framework to the case, by answering the following questions:

- What did you find more challenging: analysing the case or writing the script? Explain why.

- What impacts might your proposed actions have upon the stakeholders and the organisation?

- How has this experience influenced your understanding of ethical decision-making in your current and future workplace and career?

Case Study: It’s Who You Know...

InterTel Communications has long been recognised for its innovation and leadership as a major player in the global telecommunications industry. Sarah Lewis, a sharp and ambitious new board member, is keen to make a good impression.

At first, Sarah felt excited about this opportunity. InterTel’s reputation gave her confidence that the company operated with strong ethical standards. However, she soon discovered that several recent high-level executive appointments were tied to personal relationships with board members. Although these individuals lacked the necessary qualifications or experience, they bypassed standard recruitment and vetting processes.

Sarah discovered that this nepotism wasn’t just about favours for friends and family; there were wider implications. These fast-tracked executives had access to privileged company information, which was being shared with certain board members and outside contacts in the investment industry. This inside knowledge was being used to manipulate share trading, allowing those involved to profit significantly from upward or downward moves in InterTel’s share price.

It became clear to Sarah that this was not an isolated incident, but a well-established practice. Internal memos and patterns in share activity, coincident with confidential board decisions made it clear. Shocked, she approached her board mentor, Bill, expecting him to share her concerns.

Disappointingly for Sarah, he brushed it off. He admitted awareness of the situation but saw no harm in it. For him, these insider trades didn’t hurt the company directly, and the appointments ensured that “trusted” individuals were placed in key roles. “Sarah, in business, it’s not what you know, but who you know”, he said. “No-one has raised any red flags, and the company is performing well. Do you want to upset that? It won’t help your career to raise something like this. There’s an old saying: Discretion is the better part of valour”.

As Sarah walked home from work on a cold and rainy day, she started to question herself. How can people be so blind? Am I the only one who sees problems here? She had looked up to Bill for many years. Could he be wrong? Nepotism is a serious breach of corporate integrity, but insider trading on top of this is frightening. This situation will become public eventually, and the consequences might be significant. It could be on the front page of the business papers and websites. But, speaking out could destroy her company relationships and her place on the board.

Sarah was left with a difficult choice: stay silent and protect her career, or expose the corruption and risk everything to uphold her values. Or, is there another way?

Solution

1. Case analysis using the GVV approach

1.1 Ethical issues, Values at stake and Potential rationalisations

Giving Voice to Values, the GVV approach refers to ethical education and development that encourages the establishment of professional responsibilities. That is why, in several cases, values to social voices foster relevance based on an understanding of social science (Manfredo et al. 2021, p.356). In this context, in InterTel Communication, innovation and leadership have been aligned to provide the right amount of confidence to employees based on a standardised ethical aspect.

Ethical Issues: However, the major issue has been identified regarding the management's poor choice of social values. More specifically, Sarah Lewis’s experience has exposed that high-level executive recruitment within InterTel Communication depends on interpersonal relations with the board members. Another potential ethical issue within the firm has been identified as nepotism for the assignment helpline.

Values at Stake: Generally, it has been seen that nepotism effectively influences privileges and special rewards that affect the development of every important candidate within a firm (SERFRAZ et al. 2022, p.312). Often management tends to lack the credibility to address and offer opportunities to vacant posts based on qualification rather than prioritising personal relationships.

Rationalisation: Bill, a Board Mentor in InterTel Communication, stated, “No-one has raised any red flags, and the company is performing well”. This defies that he does not perceive the ongoing ethical disruption as a problem. According to him, the situation is normal as long as it benefits the firm, whereas it has influenced the manipulation of shared knowledge to ensure the career growth of workers.

1.2 Potential impacts on stakeholders and InterTel Communications

Conformists: This aspect refers to blindly following rules, even an unethical authority as well. In InterTel Communication, nepotism within the management has concerned Sarah’s confidence to gain growth. However, Bill, one of the board mentors, has remained calm while aware of the ethical hamper, saying there is no harm to it.

Negotiators: As for the further impact on employees of InterTel Communication, the prime stakeholders of the business, denial has been noticed. In this context as well, Bill's statements such as “no red flag” in the process, the importance of “who you know” and “discretion” have clarified that the management has found a tricky path to whitewash the acts of nepotism.

1.3 Potential Barriers and Strategies

Potential barriers: This factor creates barriers while speaking up in the company. Sarah Lewis, a sharp and ambitious new board member of this company, has identified several issues regarding speaking up. Fear, futility and the power of authority also create potential speaking barriers. Speaking up will create career-related issues for Sarah Lewis, and she stays silent.

Strategies for mitigation: Proper argument development and effective planning and script development that represents the issues to the leaders will decrease speaking up issues (Pearce, Huang & Wang, 2024, p.10). Potential speaking up barriers create a lot of ethical dilemmas as well as demotivate the employees in an organisation. Proper representation of the issues to the leaders will mitigate these problems effectively.

1.4 Alternate actions with GVV

Nepotism and insider trading are the two main ethical issues InterTel company is facing and the company neglects these issues. Sarah Lewis is a board member who finds that " this was not an isolated incident, but a well-established practice."

Self-knowledge: Nepotism and insider training related to knowledge building and applying the powers of a board member to represent the issues in front of the leaders. This process of GVV will help Sarah maintain her company relationship as well as her board member position.

Normalisation: Identifying issues and precisely dealing with them calmly is another factor that reduces the insider training and nepotism issues in InterTel communication. The normalization factor helps Sarah create a path that helps her take alternate actions.

2. Script Development

2.1 GVV Framework for Script Development

Giving Voice to Values (GVV) is a framework that defines how a business should operate ethically. The GVV framework consists of seven pillars, which are addressed below.

Values: Respect for privacy, soberness and sticking to righteousness are my core values and in InterTel, I struggled as there was a lack of it. These misalignments of values in the company were found morally questionable and pushed me towards a difficult choice between staying silent or bringing everything to light.
Choice: As I fear damaging my reputation, I feel an obligation to stand up. I can share the malpractices within the company on various anonymous platforms. This way, my identity would be kept hidden, and the wrongdoings would come to light.

Normalisation: The individual should be calm and process the expected value conflicts from others in a serene manner. Nepotism in any field creates integrity issues and this negatively influences a firm’s performance, culture and brand image (Rahmania, Wulandari & Marfu, 2024, p.2). Moreover, the GVV approach is futile at times, as even voicing the values does not make any difference at work. The fear of being wrong creates embarrassing issues for employees and they avoid airing their values and continue to face the issues regarding nepotism.

Purpose: The individual should be aware of the purposes they have to offer and make sense of them to make those appeal to others. Apart from this, it is perceived that avoiding embarrassment is possible when individuals understand their values and align them with their choices. The purpose of the GVV approach is to help employees justify their values by recognising them and using them properly at work to avoid issues regarding nepotism. InterTel Communications has to pay attention to this idea to be more professional.

Self-knowledge: The individual should be self-aware to understand the consistency of the values with their morals. In addition to this, it is seen that acting on one's values is important to voice opinions at work. According to the GVV framework, self-knowledge is crucial for taking initiative in one's values and making them consistent (Abenoza & Lozano, 2024, p.11). Thus, InterTel Communications' employees need to act upon their values and make them their strengths to tackle nepotism regarding issues.

Voice: Nepotism and insider trading should be mitigated by InterTel to foster an ethically upright work environment. Furthermore, suppose a company is earning profits by applying malpractices. In that case, this serves no good to the community and society as the people in the company will be vulnerable to unethical approaches.

Rationalisation: Workplace ethics matters a lot to employees and giving voice to values (GVV) ensures that people voice or air their values at work without any hesitation. InterTel Communications maintains its reputation by following ethical protocols, though nepotism regarding issues has affected the firm a lot. Understanding workplace ethics and paying attention to diversity, inclusion, and equity matters a lot in maintaining a proper work culture (Greene & Kirton, 2024, p.179). The serious corporate issue of nepotism affects InterTel Communications’ integrity. Insider trading allows the higher executives of the company to have access to confidential data, which creates negative impacts on the workplace culture as other employees are treated differently.

2.6 Propose Specific Actions or Solutions To Address The Ethical Issue

Creating anti-nepotism policies: Creating specific guidelines to avoid nepotism is important for organisations to retain better employees. The firm authorities of InterTel Communications need to implement different policies to improve their firm’s brand reputation and avoid nepotism issues.

Avoiding Biased recruitment: Ethical issues often create challenges for a firm, and the authorities of an organisation need to be more professional by improving the hiring processes and bestowing career equality (Kossek, Perrigino & Rock, 2021, p.10). InterTel Communications has to pay heed to this strategy to improve its recruitment process and choose qualified and experienced employees.

Train and educate employees: Educating the employees is necessary for InterTel Communications to make them aware of their work and the firm’s ethics and avoid different issues at work. Training employees properly enables them to know the significance of fair hiring practices.

3. Reflection

3.1 Challenges

Analysing the case study has not been quite challenging compared to the development of the script. As an example, I have identified the fact that InterTel Communication has developed quite an efficient path for allowing nepotism even within higher-executive employment. Due to this aspect, I have also identified that the form has been exposed to one specific challenge of 'manipulation of knowledge'. In this context, nepotism has been identified to be effective for incorporating internal politics that affect the job satisfaction level (Abbas et al. 2021, p.239). However, the case study has not delivered an elaborate range of impacts that the current nepotism has created among the stakeholders of InterTel Communication. That is why it has been quite challenging for me to consider specific areas to create recommendations for managing organisational ethics. Furthermore, I have also identified that my values regarding organisational ethics and perception towards nepotism can differ from what Sarah Lewis has experienced in her path. Due to this aspect, aligning self-knowledge to make the script while considering Sarah's position was also challenging for me. Similarly, my level of awareness towards necessary ethical practices is different, as I prioritise my potential to achieve career growth with utmost preference, which influenced my viewpoint to make the suggestions aligning with the InterTel Communications issue.

3.2 Impacts of Proposed Actions

My proposed actions will have a significantly negative impact on InterTel’s business operations. As stated by the board mentor, insider trading has been fruitful for the company’s financial growth, but my proposals will hurt the profit margin. The high-level executives will terminate any relationships with the board members and the reputation of InterTel will be affected. Insider trading is a criminal offence in various countries and information about InterTel authorities on such offences will bring the company to legal issues. The investors will lose their trust in the company and may withdraw their funding. The biased hiring process will restrain the company from acquiring young talents and lacking productivity. In the United States, the consequences of insider trading are imprisonment of up to 20 years and a fine of 25 million USD (CFI Team, 2024, p.1). Altogether, the proposed actions will destroy the company's reputation, put legal issues and lose its trust in the operating markets.

3.3 Influence of the Experience

With this experience of insider trading and nepotism, I faced a lot of ethical dilemmas as a board member. Firstly, I suspected nepotism, but later, I identified that it was related to insider training in InterTel communication. Communication with Bill clears all the facts that no one has any interest in the ethical concerns of the company and every employee, including board members, is seeking their profit. This experience has increased my professional values and my alternate actions towards insider training help me to build critical decision-making skills. As speaking up can create career risks, I developed critical decision-making and understanding skills. Ethics is the main factor that a company needs to maintain in the long-term perspective (Renaud et al. 2024, p.2). This experience will help me to make critical decisions in the future to mitigate insider trading and nepotism-related issues. This skill will create beneficial aspects for my future career development.

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