Case studies for use in Groups (First in first served! Once a group has chosen a case study, it is no longer available for another group. Choose carefully, some are more difficult than others, offering the chance to shine! Remember: you need to carry out ethical due-diligence. Good recommendations foresee different possible outcomes and challenges. ) 1 . You are a management team at a bank that is feeling competitive pressures: the financial crisis has made international borrowings more expensive and senior management are pushing for more ideas to increase earnings.
A member f the team proposes changing many previous “free” offerings to “fee-based” offerings, such as automatic-teller use, teller services and queue overdrafts. Competitors are charging their customers $20 for overdrafts, a process which really costs about $2. The majority of customers with queue overdrafts have very small accounts. This tends to be true of those who use teller services, too. Tellers commonly are of the opinion that they are people who feel very uncomfortable with the internet. What recommendations does your team make with respect to the proposal? . A long-time customer approaches has approached a team-member for enhancing for a new business venture. The customer offers as collateral a piece of property he has purchased in a rural location for the purpose of building a housing development. An appraiser was sent to the property and she accidentally discovers that this property has had some toxic waste dumped on it. It would appear that the customer is unaware of the fact but there is reason to believe that the waste may leech into the water table and affect neighboring land.
The appraiser’s recommendation was to go ahead with the financing, accepting the property as collateral, saying, “It is up to the authorities to regulate waste, not us. If the owner doesn’t know about it, there is no reason why we should know either. We can’t be responsible for every spill around the country. ” What does the team recommend? 3. For 12 years, one of your team has been the financial advisor for an elderly man in his late ass’s who is an active investor of his own portfolio and for a trust that will benefit his two children. In the last few months, she, the team-member has noticed a subtle, yet marked change in his behavior.
He has become increasingly forgetful, has become uncharacteristically argumentative, and seems to have difficulty understanding some very basic aspects of his transactions. He has asked her to invest a sizeable portion of his portfolio and the trust in what the advisor considers to be a very risky bond offering. She raised the issues with him but got an angry blast as a response: “If you don’t like it”, he said, “l can take my business elsewhere! ” She brings the matter to her team in order to work out what to do. What does the team recommend? 4.
You have been recently promoted to a management role and participate in team meetings about common management issues. You are a bit nervous about your supervisory role which comprises a number of people over 20 ears your senior, who have been working for the company much longer than you. You have tried to be supportive, taking special effort to express appreciation for their work but you notice that you often get notes from your own supervisor that you need to attend to difficulties amongst those you supervise, and you suspect that these older people are the source to complain TTS.
You nave as De k them to clarity any issues with you but they never seem to respond. You suspect that they complain to other workers about how you are too young and don’t know anything. You ask the management team for help. Can the team offer a coherent strategy to deal with the problems? You’ve recently been promoted into the position of marketing manager in the communications division of your company. Your new Job involves managing a staff and creating the publications and marketing materials for insurance sales people in three regions.
You have met the directors of the three regional sales sections before and now you ask each one for a meeting to discuss in depth how your team can best meet their needs. Two of the sales directors were very cordial, and each explained what the technical demands of their areas are and how your apartment can best meet their needs. However, during your meeting with Bill – the sales director of the third region and one of your firm’s biggest money-makers– he lays down the law: ‘Mine’s the largest of the three regions and it produces significantly more revenue for the company than the other two regions combined.
You and your people need to know that when I say, “Jump,” they need to know reply, “How high? ” If we get on, I’d be happy to recommend you and your people for every award the company has to offer. In addition, I’ll personally ensure you get a good bonus based on your team’s performance at the end of the year. You are surprised about this conversation, not least of all that he seems to be offering a bonus out of his own pocket. You’ve never heard of that before. You decide to consult your management team about the issue to seek advice. 5.
Your company administers a social web site that includes special searching features to find floggers who make comments about Australian businesses. You are approached by a well-known investment banking firm, Smith Blarney. The firm says that your site constantly associates their firm name to a blob written by Michael Alkalis and which Smith Blarney says is libelous and now subject to legal proceedings. You check out the blob. It contains an image of a pick pocket at work next to the the Smith Blarney slogan, “Making money the old fashioned way… It has numbers mentions of Smith Slangy, and in such ways that you know will return a high hit rate on your search engine that will make a strong association between Lack’s blob and Smith Blarney. The blob makes allegations that Smith Blarney had been “yield burning”, charging excessive markups on government securities that were sold to Local Governments. Alkalis had worked for Smith Blarney of r 13 years. The mechanics of the practices are complex, UT, accuses Alkalis that when he attempted to raise the issue within the firm he was silenced.
When he began supplying information to ASIA anonymously and then, 12 months later, ASIA began an inquiry. Alkalis informed the firm that he would tell them what he knew about the firm’s involvement in the practice despite the confidentiality agreement he had signed. He was fired the next day. The investigations continue and Alkalis continues to put more material on his blob about Smith Blarney. Smith Blarney say that your firm is aiding Alkalis to abuse their trade name by attracting people to his site and that you should stop associating his blob tin searches tort their trade name. What do you decide to 07 d . 6.
Your work in a steel construction business. The paint division has very sophisticated filtration and monitoring system to ensure that the air is not polluted by the paint it uses. The business is very successful and routinely secures large projects like bridges and other large construction Jobs. The Government recently declares the zone where you have your 2 main factory a high air quality area which meaner that only paints with less than gig/ L of Voss (volatile organic compounds) can be used in the area. This area was classed as requiring high quality restrictions because it routinely suffered from very poor quality air.
However, many of the paints the business uses especially on high exposure steel have higher Voss. Relocating the plant is going to be extremely expensive, lower VOCE paint will reduce the quality of the finished Job. The project manager has suggested a solution: do the painting on the Job, mostly outside the high air quality zone. Routine exemptions are granted for work done in the field anyway. The law will allow it, but it will mean that higher levels focus will be leased into the atmosphere since the sophisticated filtration systems cannot be deployed in the field.
What does your team recommend? 7. Your company has Just acquired a small mining firm. Despite the due diligence procedure, you were not aware that the miner had some coal seam gas leases in the mid-west of NSA. Look up information about the dispute of whether coal seam gas should be exploited or not. What does you committee recommend that your company do about the leases? 8. Your business is an internationally renowned clothing manufacturer. It has long been proud of its ethical standards and often been cited as an industry leader as a reminisced and successful business.
One of the trends over the last decades has been to move manufacturing away from the countries where most of the goods are sold to other countries with lower wage costs. As your company became increasingly more involved in the trend, it set about establishing guidelines to ensure that decent labor standards are observed in all plants, including ensuring prevailing wages are respected, that the workers work no more than 60 hours a week and have 2 weeks holiday a year; health and safety standards are adequate and properly observed, that seasonable environmental standards are met and that local communities are consulted and respected.
The company also ensures that company inspectors routinely visit plants unannounced to ensure compliance. In the first moves to offshore manufacturing the company subcontracts production to plants in Bangladesh and these have grown to some 5% of all the company’s manufacturing. However, some recently began to argue that the conditions in Bangladesh generally were very abusive of workers: long working hours, unsafe conditions and bullying.
As well as that, there are reports that those who argue publicly for better conditions are object to arbitrary arrest and detention, sometimes tortured; poor conditions in prison included forced labor; although there were laws preventing child labor, the practice was common and growing and no minimum wage was set. There had been a recent spate of workplace accidents including a building collapse. What should your company do? 9.
You company recently acquired a small, privately owned specialist chemical company called “Speeches”. Speeches had been operating in a low volume niche market quite stressfully tort many years until a larger company finally thought that the market was worthwhile and have entered it. But it seems that the market isn’t enough for both of them and the smaller firm, although very efficient eventually put itself up for sale. Your company has been trying to find ways to keep its involvement in the market.
One of the accountants at Speeches has come to your ethics committee and blown a small whistle. Just 2 months before it was sold Speeches had taken up a Joint Federal and State Government development subsidy if it located a factory in Thunder Bend in the north west of NSA. The Government was keen to develop alternative incomes for the people there as the opal mines gave out ND there was a sizeable indigenous community that was well organized.
The subsidy provided substantial capital for the factory and a low interest loan to supplement it. The accountant said, “While we built an installation and hired a few people to 3 maintain it, we told the Government that the equipment needed there was new and had to be properly tested at our main facility in Melbourne. However, we are still ‘testing’ the equipment 6 months later and the Speeches management team has said it wants to continue for another 6 months. On further enquiry, your committee covers that operations in Thunder Bend would never be competitive because of the greater transport costs and that returning the grant money would leave the Speeches with a debt that would mean almost doubling its original purchase cost to your company. One of the accountants is now suggesting that the new equipment could be moved to Thunder Bend. “We could do it relatively cheaply and a small workforce could temporarily relocate there to produce.
The company could make a big fanfare about the relocation but then a few months later once the fanfare dies down, move back to Melbourne. The Government audits on the project only look after hat at the financial statements. We can Juggle how costing go continue to give the impression that a lot of work is being carried out at Thunder Bend. The Government subsidy only covers the first three years of operations so, we should be able to continue this for another two years and then we’ll be home free. ” What does your committee recommend? 10.
Violet Spear is on your team, but she is not well liked, she seems a bit too fixated on being attractive to men to get on well with the other women in her team. She is very successful in her marketing position and she is proud of her professionalism and the ground work she puts in. At the last monthly meeting she raised an issue concerning a well liked executive with whom she works constantly. As she talked about her problem it became clear that she thought of her care with how she dresses and presents herself as an essential part of her successful formula.
Thee began to comment on her business suits, praising them in a fairly neutral way but then started to add a low growl or bark to his comments. She said it was too much, but he Just replied that she was being over sensitive, “a bad sport”, “an hysterical female”. According to Violet he had used all of these terms over the last few months. Violet wanted to know whether this could be considered sexual harassment. She asked some of her colleagues what they thought.
One of her colleagues said it couldn’t be harassment because Thee wasn’t her boss and had no power over he employment. Another said that other senior executives wouldn’t waste their time over such a small issue. Another SAA d that it seen and no witnesses, nothing could be proved so nothing would be done about it. Yet another said that senior executives, mostly being men, would agree with Thee about her being “overly sensitive”, “It’s the way men are. It’s in their genes,” she said, “and no government deadlines are going to overthrow 40,000 years of habit. Yet another colleague showed her some research she had done: 67% or women who complained of harassment lost their Jobs within a year of complaining, either by being fired or quitting and only 9% of complaints ever resulted with the harassment stopping. There is a complaints process but it had some fairly hard-bitten men involved in making decisions. Maybe it would be better, all things considered if she stopped wearing the suits even if it might affect her success. What does your team recommend? 1 1 . You may suggest another case study, but it must be approved by your tutor. 4
