Family Business

Family Business This case study is a perfect example of one of those situations we are sometimes faced with in life, when we have to decide whether to make an ethical, but unhealthy decision in terms of its consequences, or an unethical one, but one that is deemed to bring some profits. Like Machiavelli said, "the goal justifies the means," but does it? The case study is rather simple and involves two categories of stakeholders, the employee and the employer.

This is the most usual conflict situation that we may have at the workplace. Jane has been recently hired as the head of the payroll department within R&S Electronics Service Company by the General Manager, Eddie.

Her attributions were clear, among them the most important being "strict confidentiality regarding employee salaries and pay scales." As she begins her work within the firm, she notices that Greg, Eddie's brother, makes high commissions from his job as a technician, but has no reason to question this, as Greg was highly recommended by Brad himself, the owner of the company.

The ethical issue arises upon entering Eddie's office and seeing that he is giving Greg a separate stack of work tickets, which would deem him a higher commission than the others. The rule was that every worker would pick randomly a ticket from the stack, but Eddie has chosen to discard this rule and provide his brother with the higher paid jobs. Jane is facing a pure nepotism situation (not to mention its legality) and has to decide whether to blow the whistle on Eddie by telling Brad.

However, she has been threatened to be fired and, seeing that this is her first job since college, the stakes are rather high. Additionally, Brad, Greg and Eddie seem to be in a close relationship, with frequent lunches together and she cannot know whether she would be believed or how Brad would react. Referring to Machiavelli's quote I have written in the first paragraph, Jane has two choices. The first one would be to go with the quote and see that the goal justifies the means.

What is Jane's goal here? Obviously, this would be to keep her position as head of payroll, eventually grow within the company, perhaps even to a higher position. She should remember that this is her first job since college and if she were fired now, this may have a rather unpleasant aspect on her career in the future, because it will look as if she was fired by incompetence and not by ethical principles.

What are the means? In this case, the means are small compromises that Jane has to make, like the one we are faced with at hand. Of course, in life we all have to make compromises, but these compromises need to go along with our moral code. In fact, every time we make a compromise, we need to decide whether our moral code is broken by it and this is Jane's case as well.

Is keeping quite against her principles, her moral code and against everything she believes in? This is the question that she needs to ask herself and upon which her decision is based. The second choice would be to tell Brad, the owner, what she has seen. This will probably cost her job, because, we have seen Eddie tell it outright that.