Leading and
Managing Interrelated Business Functions
Ahmed Kasadi has just been told the company’s senior
human resources officer would like to speak with him on a conference call.
Ahmed is the Afghanistan in-country manager for a large US based corporation
and recently reported his concerns about company employees bribing government
officials to get a 500 million dollar contract. Ahmed has been with the company
for 10 years and knows how seriously the company takes its ethics policy. More
importantly Ahmed’s family was born in this region and he had developed a local
reputation for supporting economic development. The company had engaged in
bribery activities in the past that resulted in millions of dollars in fines
from the US government. When he took over his current job, he had every
employee in the country retrained on the ethics policy and held monthly status
updates on ethics activities. Now with this new issue, Ahmed was sure the HR
officer wanted to talk with him about being a model for integrity. To his
surprise, Ahmed is told by the HR officer that he had signed an agreement to
handle all disputes internally and he should not discuss this issue with anyone
outside the company. Ahmed believed that the current bribery activity was not
only against the law and contradicted the ethics policy but if the contract was
awarded and the bribery was later revealed, the company would face serious
financial and goodwill losses. Several weeks go by as Ahmed mulls this
situation over. He then contacts his manager to express his concerns. His boss
considers that the kinds of activities Ahmed is concerned about fall into a
gray area. In this part of the world, commissions and consulting fees are just
a normal part of doing business. He tells Ahmed to drop the issue and
concentrate more on meeting his business objectives. Ahmed continues to raise
concerns and eventually receives a bad performance review. Several months pass
and the company is awarded the contract. Shortly thereafter, Ahmed sues the
company under a provision of the law known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
and is subsequently fired by his boss.
Consider Ahmed’s predicament and his actions.
In your 200 300-word response, address the
following
Ø What
are the major ethical issues in this scenario?
Ø Did
Ahmed handle this situation appropriately? Why or why not?
Ø Did
Ahmed use the proper chain of command?
Ø What
aspects of the leading and controlling functions of management were
demonstrated in this scenario?
Ø Include
an example from your experience where you or someone else acted with integrity
in spite of the possibility of personal negative repercussions.
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