King Jewels Ethical Leadership in Practice

King Jewels: Ethical Leadership Case

Leadership style may have contributed to unethical behavior because:

a) There was no leader providing guidance and keeping a watchful eye on employees for last three years.

b) Andy Wong had been busy travelling and expanding business and hence failing to provide the much-needed guidance and supervision

c) Company had become overly ambitious and leadership was more interested in excessive expansion and big plans than in checking quality,

d) Ho like most other Chinese and Hong Kong leaders mainly had a dictatorial style of leadership. He would dictate terms without engaging in meaningful dialogue with his key personnel

e) Setting huge sale targets without consulting employees had led to this unethical behavior by Clement Tam

Excessive meshing of duties and responsibilities was one of the key reasons for generating such wrongful behavior. Proper segregation of duties could have prevented this problem. This is because division of labor concept implies that when people are assigned different jobs, they tend to excel at their work because they are responsible for only a small part of the whole job while the rest is handled by other people. This allows a person to concentrate on one area and achieve excellence. The same holds true for separation of jobs because when one person is given the responsibility of looking over every aspect of business, he is unable to excel in one department and may thus seek shortcuts to inflate profits. This is what Tam did. Had he not been seen as the second CEO and hence the head of every area of business, he couldn't possibly get away with unethical activities for so many years. If there were a separate department looking over the job of authentication and checking quality and another one for running a background check on suppliers, Tam could never engage in such behavior.

3. Compensation plan of the company required employees to meet growth targets as their bonuses were based on meeting those targets. This is not entirely wrong kind of compensation plan because it is a widely accepted practice and bonuses are usually tied with targets. However what is wrong with this is the setting of such excessively huge targets without consulting the employees and also the fact that people were not being acknowledged for a job well done but for meeting targets by hook or crook. What companies often fail to understand is that compensation must be based on good performance that's done with integrity and performed in an ethical manner. Bonuses should be tied not to targets but to performance and there must be a system to check who is doing well without compromising on ethics. The practice of tying bonuses with sales target is common and is not entirely wrong but it fails to see how pressurized employees feel when huge targets are set which are basically unrealistic. Consulting with employees before setting targets can ease off the burden to a large extent and help employees do their job in a more ethical manner without cutting corners.

4. Chinese culture doesn't really appreciate whistle blowing. It doesn't encourage exposing anyone or any wrong doing as people are expected to do their job and that's all. The culture also encourages silence as people get paid handsomely for their efforts and they decide not to engage in any whistle blowing initiative because that can put their jobs at risk. In china and Hong Kong, unethical business practices are common and usually go unquestioned. People are asked to do their job, meet their targets and keep their eyes shut when they see something wrong. As long as a business is doing well, no one needs to question the way in which business is being conducted and this kind of culture promotes unethical behavior that usually goes unreported.