Skeletons in the Corporate Closet

Case 4: Skeletons in the Corporate Closet

1. A leader's role in creating and maintaining an ethical organization start with setting an example for the whole organization through their own actions. In order to build an ethical organization the leader must show high ethical standards, be held accountable for their own actions so that all of the employees and stakeholders will believe in that leader, follow that leader's good ethical behavior. By doing these you set an example for your employee's to follow while working for your company. In order to maintain this good ethical behavior the leader needs to keep its employees educated, develop programs to teach them what is unethical behavior, what to avoid. Have employees feel a sense of responsibility for their actions, stress high integrity when making decisions. Have management look for pressure situations that may cause an employee to make a unethical decision.

2. Hap Parker has limited options in this situation. Hap has the option of keeping this quiet for the sake of the companies' reputation and all of their stakeholders. Hap could decide to release this information and be honest about the letter and the situations that took place and there is no way of knowing now if his grandfather stole the information or assisted in making it or was given it before his friend died. The public is likely to believe the worse here because of the former lawsuit that was taken by Karl Gintz's father against the company.

3. Hap has many obligations to his stakeholders in this case. If this information goes public and people come to the conclusion that his grandfather stole the recipe then all of the stakeholders are at risk. The stockholders stand to lose a lot of invested money, employees will lose their belief in the company and potential some of their jobs because the company is sure to lose profits and if a heir arises, possible legal actions taken against the company and a settlement will be owed. Hap's obligations to all of the stakeholders are to keep their money and job's safe, this could potentially put all of that at risk.

4. I feel that Hap should continue to look for a heir to Karl Gintz and if one is not found then to keep it quiet because no one would benefit from this being known, it would only put lots of people jobs and money at risk and I do not feel that any of the stakeholders would want that.

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